


A Tyrant's Atonement

by Defira



Series: Love and Light in the Time of Zakuul [5]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-04 07:00:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 206,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13358982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defira/pseuds/Defira
Summary: After five years of brutal rule, the Eternal Throne of Zakuul is under threat. The Outlander, the notorious Darth Nox, has escaped from her carbonite prison with the help of the Eternal Alliance, a rebellious faction led by none other than the former Emperor's Wrath and the Jedi Battlemaster. United under a single banner, people of all species and creeds have flocked to the Alliance, determined to bring down the tyrannical Emperor Arcann.Hired to assist the rescue operation, the brilliant surgeon Doctor Kol'aya Torr finds herself drawn into the escalating war between Zakuul and the Alliance, even as she tries her best to retreat back into obscurity. Once hunted by the Emperor's personnel for her talents as a prosthetic specialist, the doctor is desperate to avoid the perils of this galaxy-wide conflict between gods and tyrants.Little does she know, her greatest challenge is yet to come...





	1. Chapter 1

_The Spire, Zakuul, Wild Space, 21 ATC_

It was a good thing she wasn’t afraid of heights.

There was something strangely arboreal about the massive towers that made up the self-styled Centre of the Galaxy. Oh, there was no mistaking them as anything other than colossal monoliths that readily proclaimed the unmatched technological and architectural prowess of the inhabitants, but there was also something...

Maybe it was the immense amounts of greenery on every tier and every platform, with moss and vines and flowers hanging from every railing like lichen hanging from the branches of a tree. Maybe it was the way the platforms branched out towards one another, tangling around one another, like the spindly limbs of a tree fighting for the best path towards the sunlight. Maybe it was the mist that clung to the lower levels, the last remnant of the ancient swamps that the foundations of the towers were embedded in, like roots sinking deep into the mud.

Even the intimidating sun reactors played a part, looking from a distance like bright blossoms nestled amongst the leaves of the great tree, splashes of colour that broke up the starkness of the trunk. The ships and shuttles and speeders used by the population were like insects, buzzing and flitting about through the leaves, drawn towards the bright colours and the warmth of the sunlight.

For such a technologically advanced civilisation, it was odd that their capital should be so rich with nature symbolism. Maybe she was reading too much into it. She was looking for distractions at this point, after all.

The stun cuffs were tight around her wrists, biting into the skin whenever she attempted to struggle, and the two golden armoured warriors marching either side of her with their overly excessive pike sabers didn’t seem inclined to want to loosen them for her. Doctor Kol’aya Torr bit back the angry hiss when one of them jostled her a little too firmly, staring primly ahead and refusing to give them the satisfaction of seeing her discomfort.

She was never, _ever_ going to listen ever again when a sith told her they had a brilliant plan.

Fuck all of them.

Zakuul was a startlingly beautiful planet, though, and it was hard not to stare at times as she was marched along the walkways of the upper city. The Spire itself reached so high that the palace broke through the stratosphere; she’d heard stories that the throne room itself sat like a delicate crystal ball in the sky, defiant enough to challenge the stars for their supremacy of the night. It was certainly fitting if true, matching up to everything she’d learned about their current emperor’s ego and that of the man who had come before him.

She wondered what it was like to live up there, in a place where there was only darkness and silence for company. Was it cold, beyond the protective insulation of the planet’s atmosphere? What shielding did they use to counteract the solar radiation? What effect did the gravitational pull play in degenerative muscular systems, and how did anti-gravity systems-

Someone shoved her roughly from behind. She stumbled, and tried to scowl over her shoulder; it earned her a cuff over the top of her lekku, the sting of the slap making her eyes water. “Eyes front and centre,” came a voice from behind the mask, flat and vaguely hostile. “This ain’t a tourist stop.”

“Please do not manhandle the specimen,” came a haughty voice from in front of them; the scientist at the front of their little entourage had paused briefly, frowning as she looked from Kol’aya to the two guards either side of her. Her golden eyes were narrowed as she lingered on Kol’aya. “We don’t want his Immortal Majesty’s treasures to be in anything less than pristine condition.”

Oh, someone was going to pay for that one. Someone was going to pay really fucking badly for that one.

She tried not to flinch when a squadron of skytroopers marched past them, keeping her eyes averted. Droids couldn’t exactly feel guilt, or fear, but she was still mortal. Right now she just didn’t fancy staring down a couple of dozen goddamn robots, knowing that even twitching in the wrong manner could mean she’d be gunned down in seconds.

They drew near to a large building at the end of the large boulevard, and she couldn’t make out the elegant script above the glass doors, but it seemed to be their final destination. There were more golden Knights standing on guard at the front doors as well as the regular soldiers in the black and gold of the Overwatch; they didn’t mingle, but they all watched them carefully as they casually circled around the giant fountain and made their way into the reception foyer.

There were sweeping staircases that led off towards the upper floors, and glass encased pedestals that showcased all manner of mechanical marvels. A woman seated at the desk looked up at their approach with an expression that moved past disdain and right into outright disgust. “What are you doing with that?” she asked, making it abundantly clear that she was referring to Kol’aya.

She tried not to let the barb land- it wasn’t anything unusual, after all, she’d heard worse before she was even five years old. Humans had a rather ferocious inability to tolerate or even grasp the concept of species other than their own, and tended to lash out in their ignorance with almost exhausting frequency. The humans of Zakuul, in her experience, seemed to be no different.

But it still hurt like fuck to be referred to as a thing. An it.

The scientist at the lead of their group passed over a datapad. “New specimen for the treasury,” she said loftily, with the sort of tone that one uses when one expects to be acknowledged without question.

The receptionist stared at her flatly, not reaching up to take the datapad. “Specimen deliveries are supposed to go through the customs terminal on the landing platform two floors down,” she said, clearly unimpressed. “Has it been through the appropriate quarantine period?”

“Ah, no, that’s why we’re here, we’re here to ah... put her into quarantine.” The scientist drew herself up, squaring her shoulders. “This specimen is very important, and must be-”

“All specimen deliveries are to be processed through the customs terminal on landing platform seven- _two floors down_ \- for decontamination and quarantine observances,” the receptionist said, with more emphasis this time. She very pointedly looked away from them, going back to whatever had occupied her on the screen in front of her.

There were three knights in their party in total- two to frogmarch her, and one to assist the scientist, overburdened with bags and supplies. It was this knight who stepped forward, gauntleted fist slamming down onto the countertop so loudly that it echoed through the vast room.

“Have you no respect?” they snarled. “This is a twi’lek, the very same creature as the Battlemaster, she who has caused such immense vexation and insult to our beloved Immortal Emperor.”

The woman’s eyes flicked to her with more interest this time.

“It is of the utmost importance that we take her through immediately, for the security of our glorious empire.” Alright, she totally wasn’t going to be the one to point out the gaping flaw in that statement, but it was still a bizarre thing to say. Were they implying that twi’leks were all some sort of hive-minded entity, and that capturing her would automatically thwart Master Ona’la? Fuckin’ goddess preserve. “It is imperative that we begin processing her _immediately_.”

The receptionist stared for a good few seconds, and it took everything in her to look sufficiently cowed and not at all furious at this treatment. Finally, the woman sighed as if intensely put upon, and rolled her chair to the left to reach the far side of the counter. She pressed a button on the desk, then picked up the lanyard around her neck and scanned it against the screen. Another few buttons clicked to follow, and then on the far wall, a panel retracted with a hiss and exposed an industrial elevator behind the ornate panelling. “Next time, use the customs terminal on platform seven,” she said flatly. And with that, she went back to the crossword she’d been doing upon their arrival, promptly dismissing them as unimportant.  

The scientist nodded enthusiastically. “Of course, of course, your assistance in the Emperor’s grand works will be remembered,” she said, gesturing for the Knights to follow her. Someone shoved Kol in the back, and she snarled wordlessly over her shoulder.

“Get moving, wench.”

She was half dragged into the lift, and the receptionist didn’t even look up as the door slowly slid closed again, leaving her trapped in the small space with three Force-sensitive Knights and a scientist. She took a deep breath, and opened her mouth-

“Not yet,” the scientist said quickly, not looking back. She was tapping away furiously at the datapad in her hand, a series of numbers trailing over the screen.

Kol clamped her mouth shut again, gritting her teeth in frustration.

“Gods, the signal really is terrible in here, you’d think in the centre of the goddamn universe that we could get better holo connections for- no, wait, there we go.”

“Lek’nat,” Kol snarled.

“I don’t know what that means, but I’m going to assume from your smiling face that it was super complimentary,” the scientist said, turning to face her. The scientist, who was in fact not a Zakuulan in the slightest but instead the unorthodox Jedi Evie Che, had a narrow metal spike protruding from the datapad, not unlike a dataspike; she clicked a button on the screen and two little arms popped out, starting to rotate slowly. “Ain’t exactly elegant, but the dampening field should be covering the lift.”

“What about visual feeds?” one of the Knights said, the one carrying the bags.

Evie frowned, slowing turning in place. “Ain’t scanning any. Maybe keep the helmets on for good measure, until we can be sure.”

“I can hardly see out of this damned thing,” one of the others whined, putting a hand up to try and adjust the helmet.

“Is that why you decided to shove me half a dozen times?” Kol snapped, glaring over her shoulder at him.

“I-I’m sorry, the boots are heavier than I was expecting- I kept stumbling-”

“It’s fine,” the first Knight said. “You kept your cover. Anything else is incidental.”

“The bruises on my shoulder beg to differ,” Kol said.

“And elevator doors opening in three,” Evie said, counting off while she plucked the spike from the datapad and pocketed it quickly, “two, one.”

The doors slid open with an elegant hiss, revealing a far more industrial hallway than the sleek and gleaming reception area upstairs might have implied. There were a number of corridors branching off on both sides of the hallway, and although there was no one immediately visible, it was hardly silent. A security droid went drifting past from one corridor to another, sparing them little more than a cursory scan as it went about its’ patrol route. They all stepped from the lift calmly, without any further conversation, and Evie’s roguish grin was gone again as she marched at the head of the group.

She hadn’t really had much of an opportunity to get to know her prior to the job, and she didn’t know quite what to make of her. The young woman had been quite the larrikin during the flight and the preparations, and someone had referred to her as another Jedi’s pupil, but she didn’t really seem to fit any notion that Kol’aya had had about the Jedi Order prior to today. Granted, she could count the number of Jedi she’d met in her life on one hand and still have fingers left over- one of them being the unbearably sweet Battlemaster Ona’la, and she didn’t think that was a particularly fair yardstick with which to measure other Jedi.

Although, given that she’d gone and landed herself in a strike team composed entirely of Force users, maybe she’d have time to form some opinions other than ‘ _fucking space wizards_ ’.    

Evie strolled down the hallway like she’d been born there, head held high and her datapad clasped authoritatively in the crook of her elbow; she never hesitated, even for a moment, taking each turn and each intersection of corridors as if she had a map on the back of her eyelids. The rest of them trailed after her, but Kol’aya was grudgingly grateful that at least no one tried to shove her in the back again. They occasionally passed by other people, other scientists dressed in the same formal uniform that Evie had on, and a handful of patrolling droids. There was a single patrol of skytroopers, marching in two lines of three, and she had to fight the urge to flinch as the passed, moving to the side of the hallway to let them through.

Eventually, after what felt like a thousand years, Evie came to a stop in front of a closed door; she pressed the number pad with the confidence of a woman who had no hesitation whatsoever about being allowed entry.

It beeped in refusal.

“Che,” hissed the knight beside her, and Evie waved her off.

“I got it, I got it,” she murmured, as if they weren’t in the middle of one of the most secure facilities in the entire galaxy, and she was just trying to slice into a pinball machine. She pulled an ID card from her pocket, holding it up to the screen. The lock beeped again, less angry this time, and Evie punched in another series of numbers.

This time the door slid open, revealing a dark laboratory that looked halfway between a medbay and something more sinister. The lights flickered on at their entrance, and as the first Knight moved to dump the bags on the metal table in the centre, Evie immediately made a move for the security console on the far wall. The door hissed closed behind them, and Kol took another deep breath.

“Two more seconds,” Evie called over her shoulder, powering up the console. She had a cable running from the datapad in her hand to an outlet on the computer, and she was typing away furiously.

“I swear to fucking goddess-”

“It’s okay!” The lights flickered ever so slightly, and Evie spun on her heel with her hands held triumphantly over her head. “One for Terminosi, and the crowd goes wild!”

“Are the theatrics entirely necessary, Master Che?” The first Knight reached up and unclipped the seals on their helmet, tugging it up and over their head; a mess of blonde hair fell out, tangled and sweaty, but the Sith Lord Lana Beniko didn’t look anything but coolly disdainful, otherwise. Kol’aya didn’t know what to think of her, honestly- she’d only met her a few days ago, and the pale skinned human woman hadn’t been particularly friendly or forthcoming. Most people probably said the same thing about her, though.

“Um, yes? What kinda question is that?”

The other two Knights, the two who had been escorting her, moved up to the table as well, both removing their helmets as they went. The first was a dark skinned human woman, her hair pulled back from her face in tight twists that she had bundled together and tucked up inside the helmet; the twists fell down her back once freed, almost as long as her lekku. “Have you established a link with Parrot?” she asked, her voice rich and husky.

Evie saluted. “Yes ma’am, Master Xo, ma’am.”

“And?”

“Parrot is currently inbound, it should be here in about thirty seconds.”

A hand touched her shoulder, and Kol glanced to the side, scowling into the face of the final member of their extraction team. “Can I, ah...” Jedi Master Hervoz nodded awkwardly to her wrists. Out of the three masquerading as Knights, Master Hervoz was the only one who looked significantly winded at having to keep up the charade. “Do you want me to get those for you?”

“Are you going to electrocute me in the process?”

He closed his eyes with a wince, looking pained. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“We don’t have time to squabble,” Lord Beniko said coldly, eyeing them with those unnerving golden eyes. “Get the cuffs off the doctor, and hurry up.”

Somewhat petulantly, Kol held out her hands towards Master Hervoz, and he only fumbled slightly as he disengaged them; she rubbed absently at her wrists, tracing the lines that the pressure had marked into her skin, as she stepped up to the table and reached for her bags. There was a beep at the door, and everyone tensed.

“It’s Parrot,” Evie said immediately, and a mechanical chirp of “Twenty-Eight!” sounded through the metal. Master Xo moved to let the droid in, quickly closing the door behind it as she did so. The astromech babbled happily at them in the binary language of its kind, and Evie turned to give it a thumbs up.

“Nice paint job, Birdie, the chrome suits you!”

Lord Beniko thinned her lips at her enthusiasm. She pushed aside the bags slightly, and Kol gritted her teeth and didn’t say anything as she continued to unpack her medical supplies; in the space she’d cleared, Lord Beniko set down her own datapad and activated a holographic display of the facility, in blueprint mode, so that they could easily see the layout of the hallways. Two rooms in particular had lights pinging within them. “We seem to be running to schedule so far,” she said. “Xolani?”

“The celebrations are scheduled to begin officially in about five hours,” Master Xo said. “Based on the security rotations that we pulled, Kallathe’s carbonite needs to be in place before the guests begin arriving, which a conservative estimate places in four hours. Previous celebrations have seen the carbonite removed from storage usually between seven and three hours before the festivities begin.”

“What if they’ve already taken her?” Master Hervoz cut in.

Parrot chirped out an answer, and Xolani relayed the answer. “We disrupted the schedules of both Overwatch and the Academy, so there’s technically no one coming to collect her. Everyone assumes that a different team has been rostered for the duty- so nobody will notice her absence until it’s too late.”

“Koth, how are you holding up?” Lord Beniko asked, and a holographic figure replaced the map.

The human man in question was wearing the crisp military uniform of the Overwatch, his dark locs pulled back from his face. “We are okay here so far,” he said, his voice slightly strained. “Can’t ever say I thought I’d be getting chummy with a damn clanker, but there’s a first for everything.”

A skytrooper abruptly lurched into frame, almost clumsily so; it did not attack, however, but instead _waved_ at them. “Good afternoon, Master Beniko,” it said stiltedly. “It is good to see you again.”

Lana closed her eyes, very clearly fighting the urge to roll them. “I saw you half an hour ago, Ess-Tee.”

“Yes. And it is good to see you again now. Good afternoon.”

“Status report, Koth?” Lana said, clearly trying to ignore the droid.

“I’ve seen a few sky patrols go by, and there’s a lot of chatter on the scanner, increased security for the gala celebrations, but nobody’s taken a close look at us yet.”

“And the Gravestone?”

“Master Bejah is at the Gravestone,” Ess-Tee provided helpfully. “Master Bejah and her sub-units are at the Gravestone-”

“Last contact I had with them, everything was fine,” Koth said. “We’re gonna get noticed when we try to break atmo, but that’s kind of inevitable with a ship that size.”

“Ready for flight?”

“As ready as a millenia old ship buried in a swamp for centuries can ever be.”

She nodded grimly. “We’ll contact you when we’re inbound. Let us know if anything changes.”

“Copy that.”

Xolani was looking at a chrono in her hand as Lana ended the call. “If our data is correct, this is our best window between patrols to go down to the vaults without suspicion,” she said, picking her helmet up from the table in both hands. She glanced over at Kol. “Doctor, will you be alright to continue with the preparations in our absence?”

“Honestly, you’ll just be underfoot if you stay.”        

They nodded in acknowledgement, and Evie ambled up to the door while the others fixed their helmets in place again. “Still gonna be tricky getting you outta here,” she drawled, gesturing vaguely to Kol’aya.

She scowled at her. “Yes, well, next time you require medical assistance on a stealth mission, perhaps don’t ask the alien who can’t wear a helmet to conceal her features,” she said shortly.

Lord Beniko’s voice was muffled through the filter of the helmet as she spoke. “We are nothing but infinitely grateful for your assistance, Doctor Torr,” she said. “Please disregard Miss Che.”

“Time is a factor,” Master Xo said sharply, from the door.

Without a further word, they nodded to her and filed out into the corridor; the door hissed shut behind them, and a moment later she heard the telltale click of the lock engaging. Her nerves spiked into overdrive at the sound of it, and for a moment the walls felt a little bit too much like they were closing in on her, the windowless room suddenly feeling rather airless. She closed her eyes and focused, and a moment later the feeling passed, but she still crossed over to the door and checked that the lock could be easily disengaged from within. Although, if the others were discovered and killed, there was little chance that she’d be able to escape from the facility by herself; that still didn’t mean she wanted to be trapped in an inescapable metal cage.

It had been over twenty-five years, and she still couldn’t stand being locked in a small space. It was one of the reasons- although the reasons were vastly numerous- why she’d never really liked living on Ryloth as an adult; so much of their cities and architecture was constructed underground, or within the mountain ranges, and as much as they tried to allow for space and natural light and airflow, there was only so much you could do to distract yourself from the fact that you were buried under a literal mountain of crushing stone.

It sort of made it hard to sleep at night, lying in bed and staring at the rock ceiling in the darkness.

She shook herself, annoyed at her train of thought; shrugging off the anxiety as best she could, she got back to work. The second bag contained another stolen set of Knight armour, and she tossed it onto the floor without much thought- but the first bag contained her medical supplies, and it was this that she’d been carefully unpacking prior to Lana shoving it aside to set up the holocall. She’d read the reports on Darth Nox, all of the data that the Lady of Sorrows network had managed to pull from the Treasury database, and while it had been a very long time since she’d taken a unit on toxicology during her university years, she knew that Nox was in a very bad way in the carbonite.

There was a sink on the left wall, and a shower nozzle on a hose clipped beside it; she hunted around in her bags until she found the disinfectant spray and her box of gloves, and set about sterilising the flat metal table that presumably served as the surgical bed. It looked more like a morgue table, with shallow gutters along the sides, and drains in the corners.

She tried not to think about the sorts of procedures that would require a table like this. Especially not given how easily the receptionist had accepted that she was nothing more than a specimen.

The room felt too small again.

“Get your head on,” she snarled at herself, aggressively stomping over to the sink to start cleaning her hands and arms.

She wasted a good five minutes with that, scrubbing up good and proper just in case things went south and she needed to anything more serious than just administering the antidotes to the carbonite and the tibanna. She was still done with that far sooner than expected, the bands of the gloves snapping firmly around her wrists as she pulled them on, and she turned to face the empty room with gritted teeth. The air felt too warm, and too close, and her hands were shaking a little; the urge to speed across to the door and slam it open was growing stronger.

As a distraction, she turned away from the door and jerkily marched over to the console on the back wall, the same one that Evie had been using to slice into the main facility systems. She hadn’t scrubbed over the gloves yet, so she figured it was okay to use the keypad as long as she was careful; she was by no means a prolific slicer, but thankfully Evie had left the screen logged in, and it wasn’t that difficult to navigate the Zakuulan operating system.

After all, she’d been foolish enough to try and work off of Zakuulan medical software for a time, when she’d been stupid and egotistical enough to imagine that she could actually work for the Emperor. She’d spent enough time trying to integrate their programing into her own neurosynaptic software that she was well acquainted with in as a basic user.

There were a number of staff announcements, updates to rosters and schedules and security protocols; there were at least a dozen flagged as urgent in regards to tonight’s celebration, and she clicked through to one absently, just out of curiosity.

“ _Hello_.”

She squawked in alarm and jumped backwards, spinning on her heel as she fumbled for the blaster at her belt- but the room was empty.   

“ _Citizens of Zakuul, our glorious home, and to all peoples of the Greater Eternal Empire._ ”

Oh, sweet goddess, it was an audio message. Fuck, she’d nearly given herself a heart attack.

“ _Tonight is a sombre occasion, as we mark the fifth anniversary of the death of our beloved Valkorion_.” She edged back to the console, and saw an image on the screen. Huh, not an audio message, but a video message- and she’d have to be daft not to recognise the man on the screen, given how much she’d obsessed over his medical files once upon a time.

Emperor Arcann. Self-proclaimed Immortal master of the Eternal Throne.

Several years ago now, he’d tried to kidnap her. Well, she wasn’t actually so egotistical as to think he specifically had sought her out- merely that, in the way of all tyrannies, it was assumed that the skills of the people under the thumb of the tyrant were freely available for use without question. The Zakuulan Exarch of Ryloth, a terrifying woman who stood on par with the greatest Jedi Masters and Sith Lords, had declared her to be the property of the throne, and that her talents as a surgeon would now serve the emperor.

After the anger had worn off, she’d genuinely considered it. She hated herself for it, but it was true. To be known as the doctor who had healed the ruler of the entire galaxy... well. You couldn’t ask for a greater claim to fame. Or infamy, depending on which way the dice fell, and there was nothing she wanted more than to be acknowledged for her achievements. She wanted people to say ‘ _yes, the most brilliant doctor in the galaxy is a twi’lek woman’_ , she wanted it so badly that some nights it kept her up at night, the fantasy haunting her. She wanted the power that came with that fantasy, the assurance of her place in history.

The opportunity to walk through the gilded gates of the Zakuulan palace and cement her place in history had been difficult to pass up. For months, for almost two years, she’d feverishly worked to try and correct the problems caused by the emperor’s botched surgery on the sands of Korriban after his injury. But in the end...

She didn’t like cages, and there was nothing to guarantee that Zakuul- however luxurious and elaborate and opulent it was- wasn’t just another cage waiting to slam shut behind her. In fact, given how they’d tried to obtain her services in the first place, the likelihood that she would have been a prisoner was rather hard to ignore.

Kol’aya refused to take her place in the history books from within a pretty prison cell.

The vid had continued playing while she’d been lost in thought; she considered setting it back to the start, to see if there was anything worthwhile in the message. Emperor Arcann stood ramrod stiff, hands clasped behind his back, only occasionally bringing them round to the front to gesture emphatically as he spoke. His posture was terrible, and even in a shitty little propaganda message to rouse the masses to a fervour, she could see the strain in his shoulder and his spine.

Kinda weird, watching him like that, when she’d spent months studying medical data that had included pictures of him naked. Nobody was ever really that intimidating when you’d seen them naked.  

“ _Let this not be a solemn day_ ,” he said, seemingly drawing to some kind of conclusion, “ _but a day to celebrate the glory of Zakuul- golden and eternal._ ”  

She rolled her eyes. Humans never changed, no matter what corner of the galaxy you were in.

The door behind her made a noise, and she hastily moved to close the vid file; there wasn’t really anywhere she could hide, so she pulled her blaster from her belt holster and stood ready, just in case. If she was going to die, it’d be on her feet, not cowering at the back of a tiny metal room. The door hissed open and she braced herself.

An astromech came surging into the room, at a speed far too fast to be normal for a patrol droid investigating a noise; she recognised it as the one Xolani had addressed as Parrot. It was quickly followed by a scientist and three Zakuulan Knights, and her heart was just about in her throat by the time she convinced herself it was safe to talk again. “Any problems?” she said, voice a little croaky.

Two of the Knights were guiding a slab of carbonite, which was floating a few feet off of the floor by means of repulsorlifts in the frame. They pushed it awkwardly through the doorway, the final one glancing about nervously as if to check one last time that they had not been observed.

“Got a couple of looks from a few folk down near the vault,” Evie said, as the others maneuvered the giant slab of carbonite onto the table; Evie made for the door instead, closing it behind them and immediately setting to work on the lock. “Don’t think they made us, though.”

Navin was the first to get his helmet off, gasping a little as if winded as he pulled it over the top of his head and discarded it on the floor. “Made us?” he asked in confusion.

There was a loud thud as the repulsorlifts disengaged, and the heavy slab fell the last inch or so onto the table top; Lana was already at the control mechanism in the frame, her face grimly determined but more pale than normal. She had already begun stabbing at the buttons in the keypad, without even saying a word.

“Woah, woah, easy there,” Kol said, stepping over and putting a hand over hers. Lana snarled at her, the sound almost animalistic, and Kol felt a brief prickle of electricity in the room. Goddamn space wizards and their temper tantrums. “Hey! I know you want your wife back, but if you do this too fast, or too slow, or basically if you fuck it up in any way, you’re gonna make it a lot harder for her to come out of this alive, you hear?”

Lana looked like she was about to fight her on it, but Xolani finally had her helmet off too, and she stepped in to intervene. “Lana,” she said quietly, a hand on her shoulder as she gently coaxed her away from the keypad, “she’s here. You’ve got her back. It’s alright.”

Parrot made a quiet chirrup behind them, and Kol glanced over her shoulder to see it was plugged into the console, it’s dataspike spinning merrily as it filtered through all the security footage and presumably erased evidence of their presence. That didn’t concern her, so she turned back to the reason she was even on Zakuul in the first place.

Darth Nox.

The woman in the carbonite showed no signs of illness or disease, in the insidious nature of carbonite; she would be perfectly preserved in the mineral, even should she die, never decaying and never rotting and never wasting away. Perfectly frozen in time, even as her cells slowly succumbed to the poisonous aspects of prison she was encased in. She looked... well, she looked like a Sith at their most stereotypical, if she was honest, like some kind of half bestial monster. Her face was obscured by a mask, carved to look like some kind of fanged skull, with an almost peacock-like array of feathers along the crown. Her clothing was similarly outrageous, with torn fabrics and corrupted leather and an unnecessary number of spikes.

Well, she had a style, and the confidence to back it up, apparently- she had to give her kudos for that.

“Okay,” she said, moving to where Lana had been standing by the keypad, “once the carbonite has defrosted adequately, we’ll need to move the frame out of the way.”

“I can handle that,” Master Hervoz said, which was sensible enough, given that she wasn’t sure what task to assign him otherwise. She felt uncomfortable having to bark orders at not one, not two, but four Force-users, all of varying political standing and power she could never even dream of- and given that she was a little confused as to whether Master Hervoz was the leader of the whole Jedi Order or not, she didn’t really want to push her luck.

“The tibanna gas released during the defrost will be heavier than the oxygen in the air, so it’ll sink to the floor- but just be aware of it, don’t go breathing any of it in, else we’ll be dealing with two counts of poisoning.”

“Can we hurry it up?” Lana snapped, her hands clenching and unclenching into fists at her sides.

Goddess help her, this was why they never let family into surgery. “Like I said, Lord Beniko,” she said, fingers patiently setting up the thaw cycle, “this can’t be rushed.”

The frame around the carbonite began to hum slightly, and from deep within the clouded silver metal came a faint red glow as the heating bars activated and began to melt Nox’s prison. At first nothing further happened beside the glow, but Kol removed her hand as she felt the heat begin to grow; the surface of the metal began to cloud further, as if it was thickening, and small tendrils of pale gas began to slither across the surface.

Kol held out her medscanner and ran it quickly over the body before her. “Body temperature is low, but we’re starting to see some cell rejuvenation,” she said. “Get ready to take the frame.”

The wispy white gas didn’t rise towards the ceiling like steam normally might, but instead dripped over the edge of the table almost like water; it was cold, even through her boots.

The carbonite and tibanna mix was low enough now that the top of Nox’s body was beginning to emerge from the metal; it was a little eerie, the way the muted silver gave way so abruptly to stark black and bright red and glittering gold. “We’re nearly there,” she said, trying to keep an eye on Beniko out of the edge of her vision while trying to maintain the procedure safely. “This isn’t going to be pretty- you sure you want to be here for this?”

Lana didn’t say anything, but she could see the movement of her nodding.

“Alright,” she said dubiously, turning her attention back to her medscanner. It started flashing. “Okay, pulse is starting to climb, body temperature still low- okay, now! Now, take the frame!”

Hervoz didn’t even reach for it, simply gesturing for it; it rose into the air with ease, tendrils of the heavy gas dribbling off of it. “Watch your mouths,” he called, rotating it until it was resting up against the far wall, out of the way. Lana had immediately rushed forward once the frame was out of the way, and Kol’aya had to scowl at Master Xo for assistance.

“She’s not breathing!” Lana said frantically, trying to lift her into her arms.

“Hey! Hey, come on, I haven’t even started yet,” Kol’aya said, as Xolani tried to peel Lana away. “I’ve got her, just put her down, don’t let her fall.”

“But she’s not breathing!”

“ _Lana_ ,” Xolani said firmly.

Fuck this. “Put her down and get out of the way, or she will die,” Kol snarled. Something in her expression must’ve convinced her, because Lana reluctantly stepped back, wrapping her arms around herself as she stared miserably at the table. Kol, meanwhile, immediately set to work, pulling off the elaborate mask as carefully as she could and tossing it aside. Nox still smelled slightly of smoke, as if she’d been in a battle or a fire recently, and after injecting an adrenal into her neck to get her pulmonary system functioning at a normal rate, she dug around in her medkit and pulled out an oxygen mask. “Master Xo, you said you were a field medic or magic healer, or something, are you still good to-”

“I can assist with that, yes,” she said, moving to take the mask from her and fit it over Kallathe head. Kol moved on to the torso, trying to press an antidote stim to her abdomen and coming up short when the leather-type armour blocked the needle.

“I need to cut her shirt open for this to work.”

“I got you, lah.” Evie had a pair of laser scissors from the surgical kit, and she effortlessly slid them up the centre of Nox’s torso, her armour falling open as they went. “Got a gift for getting a girl outta her clothes, after all.”

“ _Evie_ ,” Xolani said tiredly.

“It seems like you spend most of your time disciplining others, Master Xo,” Master Hervoz said, his voice a little strained as he pointedly stared at the wall instead of the barechested Sith Lord.  

Kol ignored them all. She stabbed the stim into Nox’s belly, the bulge of her inflammed liver easy to feel beneath the skin. “She breathing yet?” she asked Master Xo, even knowing the answer.

“Nothing so far.”

Lana had crept around to the far side of the table, and taken Nox’s hand in hers. “Darling?” she murmured, and Kol had to fight herself not to snarl at her to get back for what felt like the umpteenth time. “Darling! Can you hear me?”

Kol’s medscanner began to beep alarmingly, and she glanced down at the monitor on her wrist. “Her pulse is spiking,” she said, just as Nox began to twitch; her motions became jerky, as if she was having a seizure. “Evie, get over here- hold her legs for me.”

“Eh?”

“Hold her legs down, but don’t hurt her- she’s going into cardiac arrest-”

“What?” Lana said, her face ashen, as Evie moved to grasp Nox by the calves and lean down heavily on them.

“Xolani, make sure she doesn’t bite off her tongue, or vomit,” Kol said, turning to fetch the defibrillator unit from her bag. She set it down on the edge of the table as Nox continued to twitch, peeling the covers from the shock pads before she pressed the adhesive side down onto Nox’s chest. She gestured for Lana to let go of Nox's hand. 

“Ain’t they the wrong way round?” Evie asked, waving a hand vaguely to the way the pads sat on Nox's chest.

“Hold her down with the Force, not your arms,” Kol said, annoyed that she had to even specify that. Evie stepped back instantly, and she triggered the first shock; Nox jerked with the jolt of electricity, but her heart rate didn’t settle. “Pureblood physiology is the opposite of humans,” she said, “heart is on the right side of the chest.”

It shocked her again, and this time her medscanner gave her some good news. “There we go,” Kol said, remarkably calm for how stressed she was feeling, “she’s not finished yet.”

“Is she dying?” Lana asked.

“She’s good, her pulse is stabilising-”

“She’s breathing too,” Master Xo offered.

Kol ran her hand down the ribcage to where the liver sat, feeling the extent of the inflammation; her skin was a vivid pink, with dark veins standing out in stark contrast, and in any other patient she would have immediately assumed it to be a sign of the poison. On a Sith, though? Who even knew. “She should be safe to transport to the shuttle if we’re fast, but we need to get her to the Gravestone quickly. She needs to be on fluids, and it’ll take more than a single antidote stim to help her work through five years of poison.”  

Evie snorted. “How exactly she gonna walk if she ain’t even awake yet?”

“She’s not going to be walking-”

“Well, we can’t just take her out on a hover gurney, everyone is gonna notice that-”

Nox suddenly groaned loudly, arching slightly on the table. “Darling!” Lana said urgently, rushing to the head of the bed. “Kal? Kallathe, darling, can you hear me?”

The Pureblood’s eyes fluttered open, her eyes a violently vivid yellow shot through with blood red; her breathing was ragged beneath the oxygen mask, and for a second it seemed like she was going to slip right back into unconsciousness. But then her gaze sharpened, focussing on the pale human woman above her. “Lana?” she whispered hoarsely.

Lana let out a soft sob, half laughing as she pressed her forehead to Nox’s. “I’m here,” she said, “I’m here darling.”

Parrot chirped wildly from the far wall, and the console screen started to flash. “Parrot says a communication from the palace has come through,” Xolani said, her tone grim. “Someone has noticed the discrepancies in the duty rosters and has asked for confirmation that Nox has been collected for delivery.”

“Shit,” Evie said.

Lana got a hold of herself, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand with brisk efficiency as she pulled out her holo. “Koth?”

“Here,” came the answer, and the soldier appeared immediately in the palm of her hand. If Kol hadn’t been looking, she might not have seen the way Master Hervoz immediately swivelled at the sound of his voice.

“We need an immediate evac, expect possible resistance. Can you make it to platform seven?”

“Uh...” He hammered away on a keypad out of sight, clearly seated in the cockpit of a shuttle. “There’s some new warnings come through on the general channels, some chatter about- shit.”

“What is it?”

“High Justice Vaylin is coming down from the palace to escort Nox.”

A stunned, horrified silence fell over the room, broken only by Nox’s ragged breathing. Finally, Evie whistled. “Well, that ain’t good,” she said, far too cheerfully for the situation.

They raced to get Kallathe ready for transport, stripping her quickly of her far more recognisable armour even as she struggled to stay conscious, replacing it with a spare set of Zakuulan armour Lana had carried with her in the second bag. Nox couldn’t carry her own weight, and sagged towards the floor the moment her feet touched the ground. Lana and Xolani both lunged for her, and between the two of them, kept her upright. She was clearly unable to walk though, and no one would for a moment buy that the Knight being all but dragged between two others wasn’t suspicious.

And, well, she herself was a problem. “I need to be able to fight, and to monitor her,” she said, protesting as Master Hervoz picked up the stun cuffs again.

“No one is going to believe a twi’lek walking freely in the halls of the Zakuulan Treasury is anything other than proof of a problem,” Xolani countered grimly, hefting Nox as she dropped heavily towards the floor. “I can monitor Kallathe through the Force.”

“It’s only a few minutes to the landing platform,” Lana said urgently. “It won’t be for long.”

“I am not-” Her hands came together against her will, and Hervoz snapped the stun cuffs around them. She immediately reached up and smashed him in the temple with them. “Don’t you ever do something like that ever again!” she snarled, shaking as she pushed back the panic attack that writhed within her.

“Parrot and I can go ahead and make sure the paths are clear,” Evie said.

Master Hervoz was bleeding from the temple, a miserable expression on his face as he pulled his helmet on. She wasn’t feeling charitable enough to point it out, even if it was something that could be amended quickly with kolto gel.

Fucking Force-users. Fucking space wizards. Fuck all of them and their shitty disregard for other people in their violent little mind games that consumed the entirety of the fucking galaxy. She hated the Force.

“I’m really sorry,” he said, his voice muffled by the helmet.

She ignored him.

Evie and Parrot went first, rushing out into the hallway and hissing back “Clear!” Xolani and Lana followed after them, carefully maneuvering Kallathe out of the door; even in Zakuulan armour, she was so ludicrously suspicious, arms draped over their shoulders and her feet trailing over the ground as her head lolled towards her chest. Kol’aya and Navin brought up the rear, and when he tried to take hold of her upper arm as if she were a prisoner, she snarled violently at him, baring her teeth. “ _Lek’nat_.”

She was going to get Kallathe back to Odessen, as per their original contract, take her money, and then leave. Fuck this Alliance and fuck Force-users. Let them burn each other to the ground for all she cared.

True to their word, Evie and Parrot rushed ahead, Parrot keeping track of the facility network for updates, and Evie presumably reaching out with the Force to avoid any sort of guard or patrol. They had been on the move for about a minute and a half when the building suddenly shook, a deep rumble that rattled the metal wall panels around them.

“What the fuck was that?” Kol said.

“Vaylin’s here!” Evie yelled back up the corridor. “She’s in the vaults, and she knows Nox is gone!”

“Run!” Lana urged, and they all awkwardly broke into a sprint, trying as best as they could to rush while Kallathe sank further and further towards unconsciousness. She was little more than a dead weight in their arms.

The building rumbled again, and Kol felt her skin crackling with energy; she didn’t dare glance over her shoulder, but she could almost feel burning eyes on her back. Up ahead, Parrot screeched, and the sound of a laser echoed down the hallway- followed very abruptly by the unforgettable whine of a lightsaber. “Just had to kill a droid, no one tell Bejah!” Evie said. They rounded the corner after her, and found the smoking remains of one of the hovering security droids lying strewn across the ground.

From somewhere far too close for comfort, she heard an explosion.

“Landing platform is just through these doors!” Lana said, and they burst through into the light of the sun reactors, back out onto the sprawling branches of the impossible metal tree city. There was a shuttle waiting on the landing platform, the engines primed, and there was a single Skytrooper waiting at the bottom of the ramp. It began to trot towards them.

“Good afternoon Master Beniko-”

“Not now Ess-Tee!” she roared, surging past it and up the ramp with Kallathe and Xolani. Parrot went screaming up after them, but Evie pivoted on her heel without warning, snatching her lightsaber out of her belt in the same motion as she turned back to face Kol’aya and Navin.

Kol’s stomach dropped into her shoes.

Evie jumped-

-straight over them, landing heavily on the boards behind them. “Get on board!” she yelled, sounding like she was having far too much fun. Behind them, a barrage of blaster fire sounded, and Kol ducked her head instinctively as the laser bolts went flying past, slamming into the shuttle.

Navin hooked his arm through Ess-Tee’s arm, dragging the droid along with them. On the landing ramp, Kol stumbled as the shuttle began to move, as she looked back in dismay to see Evie facing off against an entire squad of the damn things- although there were far more of them in pieces on the ground than there were on their feet, and only a few of them had their blasters pointing towards their ship. Evie was oblivious to the shuttle rising into the air, swinging her lightsaber with reckless abandon as she deflected bolts back at the droids and hacked at them with very little style or skill.

She could have sworn she heard her laughing.

“Evie!” Navin yelled.

Just then, the doors to the Treasury slid open, and a single human woman walked out. She too held a lightsaber, but unlike Evie’s bright white one, she held a glowing gold one. Kol’aya had only seen her in pictures, but there was no mistaking the High Justice Vaylin. Stories about her varied- that she was the real power behind the throne, that she was a violent psychopath, that she was her brother’s prisoner, that she was his lover, that he was her prisoner...

One thing was for certain, standing fifty feet away from her, Kol’aya did not like her chances against her.

Vaylin broke into a run towards them, cutting down the droids that got in their way. Evie, spotting the threat at last, had the audacity to salute towards the princess with her lightsaber, before backflipping high into the air and landing on the open loading ramp beside Kol. The princess looked like she was about to follow suit, and leap after them, but Evie made a small gesture with her hand, and a sudden wind rose up violently from the depths of the city, buffeting the shuttle and knocking Vaylin back from the edge.

Kol very nearly lost her footing, squawking in alarm and grabbing at the landing strut with her bound hands. As she caught her breath, trying not to stare down into the colossal drop beneath her, she instead looked up and caught Vaylin’s gaze.

She felt something shudder down her spine, something dark and cold and not at all pleasant.

“Woo!” Evie crowed, taking her by the elbow and helping her back to her feet. “What a rush, lah?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Kol asked, flabbergasted,

Evie just winked at her. “Too much to count, luv,” she said.

Xolani appeared at the top of the ramp. “Get inside,” she barked. “They’ve already sent out an alert, so we’re going to be lucky to make it to the Gravestone in one piece.”

She was going to get her money, get to safety, and never ever look at another Force-user ever again.


	2. Chapter 2

_Palace of the Eternal Dragon, Zakuul, Wild Space_

“Oh, yes! _Yes!_ ”

Arcann grunted as the woman writhed eagerly atop him, her tits bouncing with her movements while she wound her hand elaborately into her hair; she was an admirable actress, he’d give her that much. She tipped her head back, the long tresses spilling over her shoulders as she showed off the curve of her neck, moaning dramatically. It was just a little too much theatrics for his taste, and he took hold of her hips firmly and increased the pace, the bed creaking and the slap of flesh against flesh filling the air.

She squealed, her thighs tightening around his hips, and he felt her body squeeze around him. She wailed extravagantly, with enough emphasis to make it seem real- he had no idea whether she’d reached her peak, or whether it was just more acting- and he was eager enough to have the whole business done with that he let himself go as well. He gave one final thrust into her, a hoarse growl escaping from him, before he fell back against the pillows, panting raggedly from behind his mask.

Nimble hands slid up over his belly, and up to his shoulders, as the woman artfully draped herself up against his side. It seemed a little too controlled for someone who was supposed to have just had an orgasm as loud as the one she’d feigned, and the intimacy of it all as she snuggled up against him- legs entwined with his and an arm thrown over his waist as if to hug him-, made his skin buzz uncomfortably. “That was wonderful,” she said breathlessly, her breasts pushing into his arm.

Normally, he didn’t give a damn what facade his lovers put on in the bedroom- but today, her fake crooning got under his skin.

He shoved her off- probably more roughly than was necessary-, and sat up, shuffling towards the edge of the vast bed. “Go finish yourself in the refresher,” he said bluntly, digging around in the mussed sheets for his robe.

Her confusion was a tangible thing in the air behind him. “... your Majesty?”

“You heard me,” he snapped, tugging the dark silken robe from amidst the sheets and draping it over his shoulders.

“I- your Majesty, I must protest, you were nothing but godlike in your-”

“Shut up,” he said, rising to his feet and tying the silken belt loose over his hips. It only barely held the robe closed, but no matter. “If you continue with your inane babble, I’m going to assume you think me an idiot- and that will not end well for you.”

When he turned back to her, she was kneeling on the bed, her eyes wide; even as he watched, she adopted a more demure posture, tilting her head down and batting her eyelashes even as she shuffled towards the edge of the bed. “My pleasure comes from the sheer privilege of being chosen for your attentions,” she murmured, her voice husky. “That is a far greater reward than any mere orgasm.”

He didn’t exactly flinch when her hand brushed against his thigh- Emperors did not flinch, thank you very much- but it was difficult to stop himself from recoiling from her in disgust. “Did I not please you, your Majesty?” she whispered, her tongue very pointedly tracing her plump lower lip. “Your satisfaction means more to me than anything, and I would give anything to serve you as you see fit.”

Her hand slid into the robe, grasping his not quite flaccid cock.

“Please, your Majesty,” she breathed, “let me have a chance to prove myself. I can bring you pleasure you never dreamed of, I can-”

His robotic arm snapped out and grabbed her firmly by the wrist- not enough to break bone, not enough to break skin, but certainly hard enough that she gasped in surprise, her sultry bedroom eyes going wide with shock. “Let go,” he said quietly, emphasising the two words as if each was a separate sentence. She complied immediately, her fingers releasing his cock as if it had burned her; he pulled her hand out of his robe with equal deliberateness, and then shoved her backwards, watching her fall back onto the bed. “Get out.”

“But-”

He turned and walked away, heading out of the bedroom and into the lounge. He made himself comfortable on one of the many elegant couches and settled in with holovid, playing it loudly enough that he couldn’t hear her in the room behind him. Eventually, after a few minutes, he saw movement out of the corner of his mask’s sensors; she had dressed hastily, evidently dismissing his offer to see to her own needs and use his luxurious refresher, and she hesitated quite pointedly by the door, as if waiting to see if he would miraculously change his mind and ask her to stay.

He just as pointedly turned up the volume again.   

The door hissed quietly closed behind her, and Arcann immediately wilted back against the couch cushions, his head tipping back and his eyes closed. After a moment, he reached up and disabled the seals, and gasped slightly as the mask came away in his hand, leaving his face tingling from the exposure to the air. He tossed the mask to the side, leaving it discarded on the couch, and he rubbed tiredly at his newly exposed face, trying to muddle through the ugly frustration in his head.

He couldn’t say why the woman had gotten under his skin. She was nothing, a nobody- he didn’t even know her _name_ , for Esne’s sake-, and yet here he was, sitting half naked and alone in his rooms on an evening that should be a celebration, wondering whether he wanted to take a hot shower instead and scrub himself clean.

People lied to him all the time. He was used to it. People performed for him too, both in and out of the bedroom. He was used to that too. He’d had people of every imaginable species and every available gender come through his bed in the last five years, and he enjoyed the power and the sense of control that he usually got from sex.

He’d been in control tonight. She’d been desperate to follow his every instruction and every desire. So... what had changed?

All he’d wanted was to blow off some steam before the celebrations formally began, and now here he was- sulking in his room with a cartoon playing, like a child instead of the untouchable ruler of the galaxy.

Scowling, he turned off the holo- it wasn’t like he could watch it as well without his mask on, with his increasingly limited vision in his left eye- but he didn’t get up off the couch. He felt... he couldn’t say what he felt. Used? That was stupid. Nobody could use him, he was the most powerful individual in the history of the galaxy. But he didn’t feel _good_ , and what was the point of sex if he couldn’t use it to make himself feel good?      

And now he had to sit and entertain people for hours during the anniversary celebrations and he just... right now he really couldn’t give a fuck about other people. Normally watching people scheme and plead and attempt to desperately wheedle their way into his good graces was enough to entertain him for hours, watching them humiliate themselves as they tried to outdo one another and catch his eye. Maybe it was petty of him, but after a lifetime of humiliation and rejection and mockery at the hands of his father, it gave him some measure of security to know that no one could turn such behaviours against him again and survive.

Well. The Wrath and the Battlemaster continued to defy him, despite his increasing offers of financial reward for information regarding either of them. But they were nothing, they were insignificant, they were bugs beneath his feet-

The door to his chambers chimed softly, the sound pleasant and intended to be unobtrusive. He still gritted his teeth in annoyance anyway. “Enter,” he said gruffly, even as he picked up his mask reluctantly and slid it back into pace, clipping the locks around the neck frame.

There was a whispered hiss as the door slid open, and Indo Zal- his Magistrate of Revelry- entered the room. After a year or more in his service, the young man did not flinch at his state of undress; he stopped a respectful distance away, his outfit appropriately peacock-like while still demure enough to suit the solemnity of the date. “Good afternoon, your Majesty,” he said chirpily, and Arcann scowled behind the mask. He was always so bubbly, and gods it was annoying. “Just wanted to give you an update on the evening’s schedule, if you’re amenable.”

He waved a hand vaguely towards him. “Please yourself,” he said flatly, because it wasn’t like he had anything else to do except sit about and stew in his own self-loathing.

Indo bowed slightly. “As you say, your Majesty,” he said, looking down to his datapad; his stylus was crafted to look like a feather, the vanes fluttering slightly as if it was truly made of organic material. “We’ve already got some good crowds gathering in the plaza for the free concert, and the services for our dear departed Emperor have been running throughout the morning- and there’s been quite the conga line going through to the public mausoleum, let me tell you!”

Arcann stared at him, and Indo’s expression cracked ever so slightly. “Inappropriate?” he asked carefully. “My apologies, your Majesty, there have been no conga lines whatsoever- the public displays of grief and patriotism have been nothing but poignant and respectful.”

He grunted, not quite sure what sort of response it warranted; truth be told, he couldn’t give a shit what people did in his father’s tomb, which was why he’d left it open as a public memorial in the first place. If he thought he could get away with it, he’d dance on his fucking grave- fuck, he’d pull his pants down and take a shit on it, if he thought he could manage it.

... maybe that was why the sex hadn’t helped today. The looming spectre of Valkorion in his head did tend to put him in a bad mood at the best of times.

He and Vaylin had talked, secretly and infrequently, about their fear that he was not gone. That he was only biding his time, waiting to return. Sometimes it felt like he was still stalking the halls of the palace, like he could feel his eyes upon him, disapproving and sneering and laughing. It was worst in the throne room, alone in the sphere amongst the stars, with the echoes of his voice still ringing in his ears as if the sound was preserved within the glass- like his ghost stood beside him, mocking his decisions, eroding his confidence, deriding any attempts he made to craft a legacy of his own...

It had been five years, with no tangible sign of him except for his paranoia. When would his fucking father leave him be, when would he be free of his eternal cruelty and mockery?

Not today, apparently.

Indo was still talking, and he shook himself slightly, trying to focus on the words. “-fireworks displays starting at one hour after sunset and continuing every hour until the final display at midnight,” he was saying, pacing slowly back and forth as he counted off on the list in front of him. “We’re also trying something new with the sun reactors, as discussed previously, with a controlled release of both helium and hydrogen into the cores, in order to change the brightness-”

“Do I have to go,” he said dully, not voicing it as a question precisely, and not looking at Indo as he said it.

His event planner barely hesitated. “If that is your desire, your Majesty, then of course we can make provisions- I have any number of options available. I have a delightful young man on my staff who could pass as you in a pinch, especially once we shave his hair and throw him in a mask, from a distance no one would be the wiser-”

The thought of having someone walking around pretending to be him, someone looking like him, immediately roused memories of Thexan.

“-or alternatively, we can issue a statement saying that you are simply too overcome with grief on the anniversary of your father’s death, and avoid all subterfuge entirely.”

Arcann grunted, still not looking at him. “Maybe that one,” he said. It felt vaguely accurate, even if it wasn’t grief he was feeling.

Indo was scribbling away madly on his screen, nodding as he went. “Yes, yes, I can work with this- it’ll offer an insight into a softer, more emotional Emperor, grieving alone for his lost father, oh yes, the crowds will eat this right up.”

It made him sick just to listen to it, and he very abruptly wished that he could demand an end to all of the ceremonies and celebrations, that he could command the galaxy to just forget his father and move on, to never offer him praise or grief or prayers or even errant thoughts. He just wanted Valkorion _gone_ , not forced to spend another day screaming on the inside while he was forced to pretend to mourn him.     

He hated this. He hated all of this. The mask felt suffocating, the room felt suffocating, everything felt suffocating-

Arcann jerked to his feet, cutting Indo off mid word. “... or we could put the trophy outside the mausoleum?” he said, apparently only just coming to the realisation that he hadn’t been listening to a word he’d said.

The thought of the Outlander’s body being closer to his father’s- as if the spirit he believed to be hiding within the sith could fly out and seek Valkorion’s corpse if it was in close enough proximity- made his stomach roil. “Not- no,” he said awkwardly, stepping behind the couch as if to shield himself from this interloper in his private sanctuary. He gripped the back of the cushions as his head swam.

“So yes to the palace? If you didn’t want it in the ballroom for the private guests, we could perhaps place it on the balcony, overlooking the plaza-”

“The plaza,” he said, backing away to the door behind him. “Just- put it in the plaza.”

Indo was looking at him curiously. “Are you unwell, your Majesty? Shall I fetch a medic?”

“I’m sorry, I’m-” His skin was seven sizes too small for his body, and he felt like his skeleton was going to burst out of it violently any moment now. “Just do whatever makes my absence the least noticeable.”

At this, Indo perked up. “Ah, but you see, I have planned for every eventuality,” he said brightly, as if completely uncaring of the fact that the Emperor of the entire galaxy looked ready to bolt from the room any second now. “Including absent Emperors. I have the foresight for every eventuality.”

And then he laughed. “Why, I’m practically a Scion, I am- a little joke, your Majesty?”

Arcann fled.  

He locked himself in the refresher suite, his silken robe lying puddled on the ground as he stumbled towards the large shower; he tugged his mask off, and the neck brace that clipped over his shoulders to support the mask came off quickly after. He tossed them onto the bench, with no regard for whether or not it damaged the sensitive piece of tech, and turned the water on to a scalding temperature. He closed his eyes, and tried to get out of his own head.

He stood there for a long, long time, letting the water sluice over him, feeling the burn as it trickled through the open pistons and circuitry of his robotic arm. The metal slowly grew hotter and hotter, until the burn where it was embedded in his shoulder joint was unbearable. He adjusted the temperature to something more tolerable, drooping back onto the wide shelf installed in the chamber for him to sit and relax or receive treatment in the comfort of the water.

It took a long time for his shoulder to stop aching from the heat, and he just gritted his teeth and kept his eyes closed and waited to see if it was possible to melt away entirely.

Five years. Valkorion had been dead for five years. Five long, agonising years, and yet here he was, cowering in the refresher, hiding from his goddamn party planner like the goddamn coward he was, half expecting to see movement out of the corner of his eye and turn to see his father standing there alive, as cruel and manipulative and evil as he’d been the day he died.

 _He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead_ , he chanted to himself over and over again. “He’s dead, he’s _dead_.”

He spent far too long in the shower, until his skin was pale and the fingers on his remaining hand were wrinkly; eventually he worked up the drive to wash himself halfheartedly, running a sumptuously soft cloth over his body. It was unlikely that any trace of the woman from earlier remained on his body after sitting under the shower for over an hour, but he still had a vaguely pressing need to wash away every reminder that she’d even been here. He didn’t know why he felt so disgusted with... well, with himself, if he had to be honest. Faintly miserable and immersed in self-loathing, as if he hadn’t just had an attractive woman begging to pleasure him only a few hours ago.

He scrubbed a little harder, as if he could erase the memories as well as the physical remnants. Hopefully his staff would have the good sense to have changed his linens by the time he got out.

This day couldn’t be over fast enough.

When he finally roused himself from the water, drying himself off and wrapping the towel off around his waist, he had to steel himself to before exiting to his room. The bed was neatly made, the pillows plumped and the linens squared up with almost military precision; his wayward clothing had been removed for laundry service. There was no evidence whatsoever that a woman had been in here with him only a few hours ago, no indication that anyone human even lived in this space.

The sheer miserable loneliness of it all almost staggered him, and he put both hands up to his head in frustration. “What do you want?” he hissed to the empty room, because at least if he was talking to himself then there was some noise to be had, and he wasn’t alone in the silence. “You throw out the people that want to stay, do you want company or not? What?” He picked up a pillow from the bed, hurling it across the room where it fell harmlessly to the floor. “Make up your fucking mind!”

He could almost hear Valkorion laughing at him.

His commlink chimed in the next room, and he stared malevolently through the open door; he felt... uncomfortable, too many things at once. Anxious, angry, lonely, hysterical. He wanted company, he _loathed_ company. Answer the call, or ignore it and wallow in his self-loathing in private for the remainder of the evening?

The commlink stopped.  

He took a shaky breath, the decision having been made for him by his own indecision.

The commlink chimed again.

This time, he found it more annoying than anxious- he’d already ignored it once, was that not indication enough for them that he wanted to be left alone? Before he could make his mind up about whether to answer the call and snarl at the caller for their galling lack of respect or whether to ignore it once more, they made the decision for him. There was a click, as the call connected by itself, and from the other room he heard an aggressive sigh that could only have come from his sister.

“I know you’re in there,” she yelled. “Answer the damn comm!”

Scowling, Arcann stormed to the doorway and glared over to where the miniature hologram of his sister stood on the table, arms planted firmly on her hips. When she saw him, her nose wrinkled in disgust. “ _Ugh_. Are you so uncivilised that you can’t even get dressed without assistance?”

He glanced down at himself, to see that the towel was still suitably covering his nudity. “That’s your fault for calling while I had a guest,” he bluffed.

“You don’t have anyone in there, I asked the staff already. Said you locked yourself away to sulk and that you’re ignoring the parties downstairs.”

The vaguely sneering tone she adopted made him feel self conscious, and he crossed his arms to shield himself from her. “I am under no obligation to go to any fucking celebration for _him,_ ” he said, spitting the word. “I am the fucking Emperor, and I can do whatever I want-”

“That’s all well and good, but how long are you planning on being the Emperor?”

The question froze him, sending an icy shiver down his spine. “Are...” He swallowed, trying to push down the panic and the incredulity. “Are you _threatening_ me?”

Vaylin laughed. “Goodness, brother dear, it almost sounds like you expect it of me,” she said. “Although to spare your precious little feelings- no, I am not threatening you, you daft ass.”

“Then what-”

“The Outlander has escaped.”

_Father has escaped._

Vaylin kept talking, but he didn’t really hear it. In fact, he wasn’t sure that he could hear anything, except for a fuzzy sort of high-pitched whine, like the crackle of static on a broken connection. He couldn’t really feel anything either, including his body- that was nice, at least, for a moment he couldn’t feel the omnipresent aches and pains of his various injuries that he carried with him throughout each day. He felt like he was made entirely of air, like he was just going to float away entirely if he wasn’t careful, like he was going to drift up towards the ceiling and leak through the seams in the infrastructure and slowly dissipate amongst the stars, a formless, weightless gas without-

“Arcann!”

He gasped, clutching at the door frame for balance. A cold sweat had broken out on his body, and he was shaking violently. Every little ache and every little twinge that had faded away only moments earlier surged back into focus, almost brutally so. His stomach seethed with the panic and the adrenalin, urging him to vomit.

Vaylin was staring at him, eyes narrowed, and with some difficulty he kept his feet under him. “What do you mean the Outlander escaped?” he snapped, but the words came out rather hoarse and hardly authoritative.

“I mean exactly what I said,” she said haughtily, crossing her arms. He pushed himself off of the door frame and staggered over to the couch, to sit down in front of her hologram. “The Outlander has escaped-”

“But how?”

“Look, are you going to get dressed at all? I’d rather not have this conversation while you’re ninety percent naked.”   

“ _How_ , Vaylin?”

She rolled her eyes visibly, making a frustrated scoffing noise. “Well, she didn’t just get up and walk out on her own, now, did she? She had help.”

Help. Help meant traitors. Help meant someone with enough connections to be trusted in a position of power had betrayed him, someone had betrayed him-

“Are you just going to sit in your room having a stupid panic attack and leave me to deal with everything again?”

He snapped back to himself, heart racing as he gritted his teeth and glared at her. “As if I’ve ever done that to you,” he growled.

“Uh, you’re literally doing it right now- you weren’t going to come to the celebration, and I was going to have to deal with all the sad faces all by myself.” Her words were like ice shards. “You couldn’t even pretend for my sake.”

“I don’t want anything to do with him-”

“And I do?” She made that same frustrated sneering noise again, but it was far more brittle this time. “Whatever. Sit in your gilded tower like the precious princeling you are. I’ll deal with this.”

“Vaylin-”

She disconnected.

For a moment he just stared at the empty space her hologram had filled, and then he let his head fall back on the couch again, both hands going up to his head.

_Father had escaped._

His fingers slowly curled in against his skull, nails and metal edges digging in hard against the skin until it as very likely he’d torn scratches in the fragile tissue. The whole world was spinning slowly around him, and he felt the opposite of how he had before when Vaylin had first told him the horrifying truth- no longer light and weightless, but dense and impossible heavy, frozen and unable to move, like a black hole embedded in the fabric of the universe as events were slowly dragged towards him without his say so. He could feel it in his belly, the immensity of it, the huge agonising weight his body now carried; his skin was brittle, a fragile shell for the gaping hungry horror that devoured him from the inside out.

Valkorion was going to come back. Valkorion was going to kill him.

It was... hard, trying to process his own mortality like that. He’d had five years to the day, and it still didn’t feel like he’d had enough time to prepare for it. Strangely enough, death itself didn’t seem the most horrifying aspect of the entire affair, so much as the knowledge that his father had returned to torment him again.

What if he didn’t kill him? What if he kept him alive, to mock and to torture and to twist like his unwitting puppet, as he had for the first twenty-eight years of his life? If he killed him, at least he’d be free of him, free of the pain of this ruined body and the humiliation of his father’s cruelty and indifference.

He wasn’t afraid to die.

But he was afraid of his father.

When he stood up from the couch, he was surprisingly calm, almost as if someone else was standing in his place and performing the actions for him while he observed from afar. He left his towel discarded on the floor where he stood, and returned to his private chambers to dress himself. Sleek white leathers and exquisite golden embroidery, all cut to emphasise his form and his shape to their greatest advantage. He reattached the neck brace, tucking it under the collar of his robes; from the shelf containing his various armours, he collected the broadest and most intimidating of his shoulder plates, running the connective cables in through his clothing by himself and clipping it into place. It was not a sleek, carefully crafted piece worthy of an emperor, but a brutish, ugly thing, looking to all intents and purposes like it had been scavenged off of the sight of a shuttle crash. He liked it that way, he liked to look jarring- he liked to remind people that he had crawled from the ruins, bloody and screaming, and had emerged triumphant and more powerful than any of them could imagine. He was built of scrap and mockery, and yet he was still more powerful than any of them.

And he would never let them forget it.

He pulled his portable commlink from his desk as he passed, marching towards the door without breaking his stride; his current seneschal answered without a moment’s hesitation. “Your Majesty?”

The doors to his suite hissed open as he approached, and the guards standing sentinel in the hallway beyond slammed their gauntleted fists against their breastplates in salute. “Have my war council assembled immediately,” he said, stalking towards the elevator.

“As you say, your Majesty. Do you require medical attention?”

He realised he hadn’t stopped to inspect himself in a mirror, and he must have truly injured his face after all, if it was visible over holo. “It’s not a priority.”

“I will have a member of the Royal Physician’s office attend the war room, should you require their services.”

He grunted. “Where is the High Justice?”

The man was utterly unflappable, and he appreciated that immensely in his staff. “Her ladyship left the palace about an hour ago-”

“I didn’t ask where she went, I asked where she is now!”

“To the best of my knowledge, she is en route to the palace. She called shortly before yourself and also requested use of the war room.”

He felt a small prickle of satisfaction at the thought of having beaten her to it. “Please advise me when she arrives,” he said. “Perhaps she can use it for her games when I am done.”

It was cruel, and it was petty, but her barb from earlier was still stinging, and he’d never be accused of being one to play fair.

“As you say, Your Majesty. Will you be joining your guests for the gala later this evening? Shall I have your valets on hand to help with your evening wear?”

The elevator doors slid shut behind him, and the lift began to descend. “I have no intention of attending the gala,” he growled.

“Very good, your Majesty. I shall see to your requests now, with your leave.”

Arcann nodded jerkily and turned off the device, stowing it safely in his pocket; in the privacy of the elevator, he raised a hand to the right side of his forehead, and his fingertips came away ever so slightly stained with blood. Well, it was hardly debilitating, so the damned medics could just wait.

Everything could wait.

The doors hissed open softly, revealing the war room in chaotic motion already, with analysts running to and fro in a frenzy. All movement froze in place for a moment at his entrance, and as he stalked into the room towards the centre console, someone barked out an order; everyone bowed in unison, no one daring to make eye contact with him. A good number of them were in their formal wear, apparently having been called away from the festivities.

It made a small and ruthless part of him abundantly pleased to have ruined a day dedicated to his father’s memory, even if it was for just a few people. “What,” he said mildly, enjoying the way everyone flinched in anticipation of his words, “is the situation?”

A woman in the armour of a Knight Captain stepped forward, a hand pressed briefly to her breastplate in salute. “Your Majesty,” she said briskly. “A strike team of armed terrorists has stormed the Treasury building and absconded with the Outlander.”

He waited for the mental recoil within him, the same as when Vaylin had told him, but he had locked his fear down almost brutally; the other person, the other Arcann, was still in charge at the moment, and he had no time for the simpering panic that had consumed him upstairs. “I require more details than that,” he said, his voice calm but the words growled.

The Knight Captain’s facade cracked ever so slightly, a miniscule flinch before she steeled herself again. “We are still collating the available data-”

“That is not an answer, Captain.”

“-but preliminary reports suggest a team of between five and eight individuals,” she finished. “They were masquerading as officials from numerous departments, including-”

She fumbled slightly, the hesitation obvious. “Yes, Captain?” he asked.

“Including Knights of Zakuul,” she said.

He breathed in slowly through his nose, even as his mind raced to begin taking in the immensity of this failure. His pocket buzzed, and he withdrew his commlink in time to see the screen flash ‘High Justice inbound’.

“ _Get out of my way, you insolent cur!_ ”

The door on the far side of the room was thrown open violently, and a body went sailing through the air above their heads; they crunched loudly against the wall, breaking a monitor before crashing to the floor. Arcann did not bother to watch the trajectory of the body, and instead remained facing the door, hands clasped behind his back as Vaylin came stalking heavily into the room.

She was clearly only barely holding onto her temper, her shoulders hunched and her stance wide as she breathed heavily. She opened her mouth to speak, but he preempted her.

“So nice of you to join us, sister dear,” he said, his tone bland but utterly dismissive at the same time. He saw the barb land, saw the way it sunk deep, but this Arcann did not care. He turned back to the Knight Captain. “Please continue, Captain.”

The Knight Captain was clearly uneasy at being used as a pawn between the two of them, but she had no recourse to deny him his command. “What we know so far is that the terrorists took advantage of the change in routine that today’s celebrations caused, and were able to enter the Treasury building unchallenged. As the Outlander was scheduled to be transferred from the Treasury to the palace plaza for the evening gala, her removal from the vaults did not trigger any of the fail safes we normally have in place.”

“Are you telling me that we just left the vault doors open all day waiting for someone to be bothered coming to collect her?” he said, gesturing wide with one hand. “Do we simply cease to act with any sort of authority when a holiday comes calling? Is that what I am to take away from this affair?”

“I- of course not, your Majesty, I-”

“Enough,” he said, turning away from her. “I want answers. I want physical evidence. Tell me who is responsible, and where they are.”

His words fell on the room, and everyone seemed frozen like a tableau; finally, a woman standing near to the central console seemed to gather her courage, stepping forward nervously. “I, um... if I may, your Majesty-”

“If you may what? What kind of fool question is that?”

She swallowed. “Most of the security footage from inside the facility has been corrupted, we’re trying to have the data repaired now,” she said, her voice cracking marginally. “We can’t-”

“So you’re telling me you have nothing,” he said flatly.

“No! Um, I mean, no your Majesty, of course not.” She pressed a few buttons on the keypad in front of her, and a large holographic display filled the room; it wasn’t quite life sized, but it was close enough that he was able to see the details of the interlopers in great detail as they came pouring out of a holographic door. “The external cameras run on a separate security system to the internal Treasury systems, mostly maintained via Overwatch instead of in-house. These were not affected by the overrides that the terrorists uploaded from within, and managed to capture some footage.”

Arcann watched in silence as the footage played out, with a shuttle landing unopposed on the loading platform, the ramp descending and a single skytrooper shuffling down to the entrance. That should have been the first warning that something was amiss, a single skytrooper? They never travelled alone, the damned things were flimsy and utterly brainless, even despite their advanced programming. Their success came in numbers, and their ability to be produced far faster and far cheaper than any enemy could provide soldiers.

“Then, ah... there’s a few minutes where they wait, so I’ll just- I’ll just fast forward to the relevant moment.”

“Who was the pilot of the shuttle?” Arcann said, circling around in the hologram to stand before the ship, staring up towards the cockpit.

“Unconfirmed- like the terrorists who infiltrated the Treasury itself, the pilot wore what was undoubtedly a stolen uniform, and the helmet masked their features.”

The footage began to move again, even as he stared up at the shuttle, and with some difficulty he turned away and faced down the platform towards the door. It flew open, the speed reduced to about a third, if not less- first came an astromech droid, and even at a quick glance it was easy to see that despite the design and the paint job, the proportions were far too wide to be a Zakuulan droid. How had no one else noticed that?

“We’re investigating to see how exactly they managed to reprogram a Treasury mech,” one of the analysts was saying, “and how long ago-”

“That’s not a Treasury droid,” Arcann said, almost incredulously.

The analyst didn’t seem to know whether to view this as a dismissal or a question. “Ah... your Majesty?”

Izax forfend, he had nothing but idiots under his command. “That is not a Treasury droid,” he repeated, as if speaking to a simpleton. “It’s not even a Zakuulan droid- look at it.” With a gesture, he froze the footage in place, and the woman in control of the display scrambled to focus on the section he indicated. “The Zakuulan model is- on average- about three inches slimmer in diameter, and the leg apparatus is sitting much higher than normal. This is clearly just as poorly disguised as it’s counterparts, but it’s definitely been modified or painted to resemble a Zakuulan model.”

The room echoed with silence.

“So the question remains, why are the staff in my most high security facility- who are entrusted with the most valuable and dangerous treasures of the empire- so lax in their observations that they cannot even recognise a potential threat even as it rolls in front of them just one step short of carrying a sign announcing its’ treachery!”

No one answered his roar, and no one could meet his gaze. With an aggressive jerk of the hand, he indicated for the woman to unpause the footage; it resized, taking the focus off the droid and back to a distance to comfortably observe the entire scene, and the figures began to move.

There was a woman accompanying the droid, dressed in the long white robe and ugly hat that he had come to associate with scientific and medical staff in his employ; unlike the rest of the scientific and medical staff in his employ, she carried a lightsaber. She was in the process of attaching it to her belt as she exited the building, and her face was lit up with an expression that bordered on euphoric- she looked like she was having the time of her life.

“Who is she?” he snapped, turning to the closest analyst.

“We are still running through the database, your Majesty-”

“ _Then hurry up!_ ”

Vaylin was standing opposite him, and she’d stepped into the holographic display just like she had; she stood on the edge of where the platform dropped away, eyes narrowed as she watched the woman running towards the shuttle. “I hate her,” she hissed quietly, and Arcann got the distinct impression that she hadn’t intended for him to hear her.

She had jet black hair and golden eyes, her skin a tawny brown; as she moved towards the shuttle, the doors opened again, and another three figures came staggering out. Something writhed in his stomach at the sight of three Zakuulan Knights, part hysterical panic at the fear of treachery and part seething fury at the acknowledgement of betrayal, but before he could give voice to those feelings, one of the other analysts spoke. “We know this one here to be the Outlander,” they said, stepping as close as they dared to indicate the figure in the centre of the three; they were being dragged between the other two, their head lolling towards the ground and their feet not even attempting to carry their own weight. “And given the brief audio recording that we have salvaged from the sensors in the reception hall, we have confirmation via voice recognition that this one-” They gestured to the Knight on the left, “-is Lord Beniko, the Outlander’s lover.”

He breathed out sharply, the sound like a low growl under his mask. “Was this a sith attack?”

“Ahh.. unconfirmed at this point-”

“Get the Sith Ambassador up here immediately. I have questions for her.” He circled around to the figure on the right. “What of this one?”

“Again, your Majesty, we have not yet confirmed-”

“Why are you wasting so much of my time telling me your failings?” he snarled. “Tell me what we _do_ know!”

“We do know that it’s likely Beniko was the only sith in attendance,” they said, the words tumbling out in a rush. “We have obtained voice samples from this footage of every individual sparing the Outlander, and we are currently running analyses on them. None of them bore what one would consider to be typical Imperial accents.”

The footage continued to play, and another two figures exited from the building- and Arcann’s gaze snapped to the unarmoured one. “A twi’lek?” he said, his pulse leaping. If this had something to do with the fucking Battlemaster and her fucking cruel mockery of Thexan’s death-

“This is the other member of the party we have been able to identify conclusively,” someone said. “This is Doctor Kol’aya Torr, previously a member of the Independent Rylothian Government prior to Ryloth joining the glorious Immortal Empire, and a fugitive from Zakuulan law.”

She was... it was hard to say what he felt, looking at her- what was the metric with which one measured a twi’lek’s features? He supposed she was handsome enough, her features quite striking; maybe by the standards of her race, she was considered a great beauty, who knew. She had skin that seemed gold in the pale distortion of the hologram, and eyes as dark as night. With difficulty, Arcann tore his gaze away from the woman’s face. “Fugitive?”

“Yes, your Majesty- she was singled out a number of years ago as a potential asset by the Royal Physician’s office, but she refused the summons and was later implicated in the murder of at least one Zakuulan Knight on Ryloth.”

He turned back to her, staring with eyes narrowed as she sprinted in slow motion towards the shuttle; he couldn’t say he remembered her at all, but he had no idea why the Physician’s office might have thought it appropriate to bring in outsiders in the first place. There was something in her eyes, fury and frustration and fear all warring for prominence as she fled for safety, but-

“Why is she in stun cuffs?”

“We cannot confirm anything definitively at the moment, your Majesty, only that she also entered the facility in stun cuffs as well. It is highly likely that she is Lord Beniko’s prisoner or slave.”

Something was tickling at him, clues trying to slot together. “How did she escape us last time?” he asked, circling slowly around her.

“Reports from the Exarch of Ryloth at the time indicate that she was assisted by members of the Wrath’s Alliance.”

 _There_ it was.

“So,” he said quietly, still circling her as she fled in slow motion, “that begs the question- is she still associated with the Alliance?”   

“If she is, then how come she’s someone else’s prisoner?” Vaylin said, coming up to stand beside him.  

“An excellent question.” He turned to the final Knight, who had grabbed the lone skytrooper on their way past. “I assume this one has not yet been identified,” he said to the room.

“Correct, your Majesty. This particular individual does not appear to have spoken at any point during the attack, or at least not on any files that have been recovered so far. We will be relying on the positive identification of the other two individuals to draw up a list of likely accomplices.”

The footage continued to move, and he saw the unmasked woman pull the lightsaber from her belt once more as a squadron of loyal skytroopers emerged from the building. Doctor Torr quite visibly flinched, the expression in slow motion quite impossible to miss- possible proof of her forced involvement in the mission? Her reaction to the weapon was certainly that of a woman who expected it to be used against her.

But instead, the dark-haired woman leapt over them rather theatrically, lunging to engage with the droids; this caught his attention, and he followed her hologram, scrutinising her carefully as she attacked.

He frowned.

“A problem, brother?” Vaylin said caustically.

He gestured to the woman, part confused and part irritated. “She is... untrained,” he said, watching her hack and slash at the skytroopers. “Her stance is weak, her grip is loose, she follows no rotation or established fighting style-”

“And yet she doesn’t seem to be having much of a problem with our carefully programmed droids. How fascinating.”

He scowled at her. “She is neither Jedi nor Sith,” he said, still following the woman’s almost childish display. “Neither faction would allow someone so reckless and unfocused to fight in their name. She bears no indication of formal training whatsoever.”

“Hmm.” Vaylin crossed her arms, leaning back against the console. “Didn’t seem to make much of a difference as to whether she thoroughly humiliated you, though.”

His face heated, and he snarled at her before spinning on his heel and turning back to the assembly. “Who was on duty in the Treasury?” he asked, and even before the first name had been sufficiently listed off for him, he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, actually- have them all rounded up and executed.”

“All of them, your Majesty?”

“Every last one of them have contributed to the culture of negligence that allowed this breach to occur in the first place- so _yes_ , every single one of them, round them up and execute them.”

From overhead, a warning klaxon began to sound, and he gritted his teeth. “What now?” he snarled.

There were a few moments of confusion, and then from the other side of the room he heard someone call “A large unidentified vessel is attempting to leave Zakuul, your Majesty.”

“On screen!” he barked, and the holographic display taking up the room vanished, returning them to an orbital view of the planet; the grid-like formation of the Eternal Fleet, at once comforting and skin-crawling, hung patiently against the stars, waiting for his command. His eyes darted over the airspace over the major spaceports, and found nothing of note. “Where?”

“Here.” It began to flash red, an almost excruciatingly large ship almost as large as a capital cruiser- and it was surging upwards at speed from the swamps, of all places.

“What in the name of Aivela’s fucking tits is that?” he said incredulously. It paid no heed to the patrol shuttles that were trying to intercept it, the cannon fire bouncing off of its shields without impact. It was an ugly, unwieldy thing, the dimensions entirely wrong for a vessel that was presumably meant for flight. “Where did it come from?”

The alarm continued to sound, and he shoved the technician nearest to him out of the way as he moved over to the console; with the work of a few moments, he accessed his personal servers and pulled up the interface for the Eternal Fleet. The immense grid began to move instantly, the ships slowly pulling away from their assigned coordinates as they moved to intercept the alien craft.

No one had answered him, but there was a lot of indistinct shouting; maybe someone had said something, and he just couldn’t hear it over the din in the room. Maybe he’d tuned them out.

The craft continued to accelerate, smoke trailing off of it as it broke through the atmosphere. He moved the Eternal Fleet into position.

And sent through the order to fire.

As one, the Fleet began to rain down the entirety of its arsenal upon this single ship- and to his immense horror, it did not stop. He saw the shields flicker under the horrific bombardment, but it surged onwards, with no more concern than he might have had while brushing off a mosquito.

That was... that was _impossible_. Nothing could withstand the combined firepower of the Eternal Fleet, nothing! He had watched from the comfort of his throne as the entire Republic and Imperial navies had crumpled and burned under his approach, as Fleet after Fleet had gone up against his warships and come away as nothing more than dust on the interstellar winds. He was untouchable, unstoppable, his Fleets were unchallenged and without peer in the entirety of the galaxy!

And so he watched in frozen, disbelieving silence, as the ugly, misshapen alien craft fired a single sustained blast of energy, and his unstoppable fleet began to die.

Somewhere inside of him, buried beneath the mask, he began to scream in terror- because he could ask for no surer sign of his father’s return than the utter destruction of his greatest weapon and shield.

“Your Majesty?”

He blinked, coming back to himself; it did not appear that he had actually screamed aloud, thank the gods, but the lapse was still more than he was willing to allow in public. It was more than he was willing to tolerate in private, if he was honest with himself.

“Your Majesty, your orders?”

He looked around the room, well aware of how ragged his own breathing sounded under his mask; he wondered if they could all hear his heart beating furiously in his chest too. He looked back to the orbital display, feeling the panic swell in his gut at the sight of the immense hole in the lines of the Fleet. You are no longer safe, it whispered to him. “Where is the enemy craft?” he said, hoping that the hoarse edge to his words came across as a growl.

“They- they jumped to hyperspace, your Majesty.”

Of course they did. They had their prize, they had Valkorion. They would regroup, and they would come for him.

He straightened, removing his hands from the console; the interface for the Eternal Fleet vanished immediately, unresponsive once its’ master was not connected. “Have their trajectory mapped,” he said. “There are only so many places a ship that size can go without notice- so make sure that we’re already there to notice.”

The room leapt into motion, the analysts and soldiers and strategists surging to follow his commands. He grabbed one of them by the elbow as they passed him.

“Have all available information on Doctor Torr forwarded to my private servers,” he said, before turning and marching from the room without another word. He could feel Vaylin’s eyes on him as he left, but he did not turn to acknowledge her.

The moment he crossed the threshold of his suite, he tore the mask from his face, snarling as he hurled it violently onto the floor. The shoulder guard followed suit, and after that the neck brace.

He screamed.

He screamed until his throat was hoarse and bloody, until his knees gave out and he fell forward onto the floor, head bowed as he cringed downwards on hands and knees. He was crying, sort of, and he was breathless, but he couldn’t stop himself.

_Father had escaped._

He came back to the moment some time later, lying panting on the floor; there was blood under his nails, and his face ached.

He was not going to let Valkorion win.

With some difficulty, he got himself up off of the floor and up to his private desk, where his inbox was flashing with the requested files. Hands shaking, he pulled open the first one, and found it still set on the vid file that had been playing in the war room. There was the twi’lek doctor, poised on the end of the shuttle ramp, her hands bound by stun cuffs and fear in her eyes.

“Doctor Kol’aya Torr,” he murmured, his throat too ragged for anything louder.

If his suspicions were correct, she was going to be the weak link in this Alliance- and she was going to be the one to bring him the victory he deserved.


	3. Chapter 3

_The Gravestone, Asylum, Wild Space_

“Ma’am,” Kol’aya said firmly, “I don’t know what sort of doctors you used to have in the past, but I’m afraid you can take your Sith nerfshit and shove it out an airlock, because it won’t fly in my medbay.”

Kallathe Jen’zuska, the infamous Darth Nox, was so pale as she lay back against the mountain of pillows that her skin had taken on an insipid pink tone instead of the rich, vibrant red it had appeared in the holos; despite the obvious weakness, she smirked at her, her bloodied yellow eyes foggy with pain and exhaustion. “I like her,” Nox said, addressing the comment to where Lord Beniko sat at her bedside.

Lana looked equally as exhausted, but the emotional fractures that had appeared in the minutes after Kallathe’s revival had closed over, the frosty demeanour firmly back in place. “Duly noted,” she said, not looking up from where she was perusing a datapad. She was, however, holding onto her hand quite firmly atop the blankets, their fingers entwined as Lana absently ran her thumb back and forth over Kallathe’s knuckles.

“Can we keep her?”

Kol’aya’s adrenalin spiked immediately, her shoulders going rigid at the mere allusion to captivity. She had been in the process of reprogramming the pharmacology unit above her bed with the new regime of painkillers, fibrinolytics and anti-nausea medications, but she found herself quite frozen instead, unable to move at all. Her fingers hovered over the touch screen, and with just a slight turn of the wrist, she’d be able to administer a lethal dose of the sedatives. She would not be kept, not again, not-

Kallathe rolled her head on the pillow towards her almost instantly, eyes piercing through, but Lana just sighed. “Please choose your words more carefully, dear,” she said.

“I simply meant I want to stay with the lovely doctor,” Kallathe said, but her tone was a little more frivolous, a little more sulky, than it had been a moment ago. There was an old scar on her face, the slave brand unmistakeable, and Kol’aya did her best to swallow down the moment of panic that had reared its’ ugly head in her gut. “You’re going to have me poked and prodded by these wretched doctors-”

“I’m standing right here,” Kol said, finally finding her tongue again.

“Yes, but you’re _lovely_ to look at,” Nox crooned, pouting ever so slightly. “Far nicer than some of the other medics I’ve had in my lifetime.”

“I’m so glad that my years of dedication to the field of medicine can be summarily dismissed in the face of how pleasant I am to look at,” Kol said caustically. She flexed her hand and moved away from the temptation of homicide.

They were several hours out from Zakuul, heading towards a small mining colony perched above a gas giant- ironically named Asylum, and just as ironically, a facility for mining and processing tibanna gas, one of the two primary gases involved in the carbonite freezing procedure. After the immediate urgency of stabilising Nox had passed, they’d attempted their launch- Kol had under no circumstances wanted to attempt any sort of cardiac intervention while the ship was under fire. A sensible decision, given that the moment they’d broken out of the canopy of the Eternal Swamp, the Gravestone had come under an almost constant attack, culminating in the horrifying and near fatal confrontation with the Eternal Fleet.

She was going to have nightmares about that for months- the vast array of ships lined up against them, like a net closing in around them, trapping them and confining them and suffocating them. She’d seen videos of the attacks- everyone had-, and nothing could possibly ever have prepared her for the reality of it; as the survivor of a military occupation of her home, she was used to the shadow of a far more powerful threat hanging over her head at any given moment, but this was... different. A star destroyer could blot out the sun, but the Eternal Fleet could wrap itself around a planet and open fire until it had been ground to nothing but burning ash.

She’d been relatively lucky when she’d fled from Ryloth, all things considered. If any of the Fleet had been there that day... she probably wouldn’t have made it.

Kallathe let out a petulant sort of whine, and Lana glanced up at last, a flicker of worry in her eyes. “It _hurts_ ,” she said loudly, without any sort of indication as to what she was talking about.

Kol’aya resisted the urge to roll her eyes- she’d worked with toddlers far more sensible than this. “That’s to be expected,” she said, not bothering to ask what was distressing her. “You’ve undergone significant stress in the last few hours, and regardless of how good my treatments are-”

“I’m always interested in hearing more about your _treatments_ , doctor.”

“-you are still going to experience a great deal of discomfort in the coming days, if not weeks,” she said firmly, ignoring the lewd flirtations. “Your body is responding well to the antidote treatment and detox procedure for the carbonite poisoning, but it will still take you several days to successfully pass any lingering toxins from your bloodstream. The fact that you aren’t experiencing more severe symptoms is a promising sign.”

“And you did have a heart attack, dearest,” Lana murmured, rubbing her thumb gently over her hand. “It’s going to hurt.”

“Well, I don’t _like_ it. I don’t want it to hurt.”

To Kol’s immense surprise, Lana laughed softly. “You always were the most wretched patient, dearest.”

“Anyway,” Kol said, awkwardly trying to cover up her discomfort at the intimacy of the moment, “we’ll keep you on dual antiplatelet therapy for now-”

“Oh, Force spare me this science babble,” Kallathe growled, trying to tug a pillow up over her face.

This time she did roll her eyes. “We’ll give you a tablet to stop you having another heart attack,” she said bluntly, punctuating each word as if it was its’ own sentence. “I can’t do any sort of regenerative therapy or revascularisation on a million year old spaceship-”

“Big words. Do not like.”

Kol pointed her stylus at her. “Interrupt me again, and you’ll go in the airlock,” she said, expression dead serious.

Kallathe stared at her for a few painfully long seconds- long enough for her to remember that this woman was one of the most powerful Force users in the galaxy, and such a tangible threat to her enemies and allies alike that she had been locked away for five long years. And she’d just threatened her.

Eventually, though, the almost cat-like eyes narrowed with amusement, and she rolled her head back to the side again to look at Lana. “I like her a _lot_ ,” she said. “She bites.”

“She’s also responsible for keeping you alive, dearest, so perhaps don’t aggravate her quite so much?”

The terrifying Dark Lord of the Sith paused again, a stillness that Kol’aya well and truly recognised. “I think I’m going to be sick again,” she said, right before she began to make the most truly horrific retching noises. Kol’aya had already anticipated that, however, and had the disposal bag at the ready; there was no great equaliser in life like a stomach upset, bringing the mighty to their knees just as readily as the most overlooked individuals in the galaxy.

She didn’t want to say she was amused by Darth Nox’s suffering, but... well. She was only mortal, after all.

When Kallathe was finished, lying back against the pillows and panting weakly, Kol took away the bag and tossed it into the hazardous waste bin; turning back to the bed found Lana standing beside her lover, gently dabbing at her face with a hygiene cloth. It was, again, a painfully intimate moment- far more so than she was used to dealing with in her day to day practice. Peeling off her sterile gloves and tossing them into the bin as well, she jerked her head towards the door. “I’m going to let you get some rest,” she started to say, but Nox let out a sound of distress behind her.

“Wait.”

Kol’aya turned back towards them, tattooed eyebrows raised. Lana too was looking at her quizzically, the washcloth held loosely in her hands.

Kallathe had her eyes closed, her jaw clenched shut as if she was either fighting the urge to vomit again, or fighting _herself_. The small tendrils on her chin were ramrod stiff with tension too, more like barbs or ridges than some of the more elongated tendrils she had seen on Purebloods before. Kol’aya stepped up to the bedside again, keeping her hands clear now that she didn’t have gloves. “Ma’am?” she asked politely.

Finally Kallathe breathed out sharply through her nose, and when she spoke, she sounded almost disgusted with herself. “Is it safe?” she said.

Kol’aya and Lana looked at each other. “You mean, your condition?” Kol said. “Yeah, you’re recovering remarkably given the circumstances-”

“No,” she said, more urgently this time; her fingers curled against her sides, clawed fingers digging into the sheets. “Am _I_ safe?”

She had no idea how to answer that- wasn’t that exactly the same question?

“For other people.”

Lana let out a small sound of distress, her hand moving instantly to cup Kallathe’s cheek. “Dearest,” she said, but Kallathe jerked her head out of reach.

“ _Don’t_ ,” she snarled, and Kol’aya felt her skin prickle uncomfortably with the surge of... _something_ in the air. Some kind of power unlike anything she’d ever encountered before. “What’s to say that just touching me won’t be enough for him to leap across to you? I won’t let him hurt you, I _won’t_.”

Goddess preserve, they were talking about the dead emperor again. Kol lifted both of her hands in a gesture of surrender. “This is really outside of my field of expertise,” she said awkwardly.

“I shouldn’t be alone with people,” Kallathe said stubbornly.

Something like fire came into Lana’s eyes, her expression hardening. “I did not defy the Dark Council and a tyrannical princeling just for you to dismiss me as a liability,” she said, her words clipped and icy.

“I’m just- I’m just gonna go now,” Kol said somewhat desperately, gesturing to the door over her shoulder.

Thankfully, the two sith seemed to be ignoring her already. “I have clung to life for the last five years on the promise that I might one day be able to see your face again and apologise to you for the pain I have caused,” Kallathe was saying, her voice at once both angry and heartbroken. “I will not risk it all now, not when it is back within my grasp-”

“And surprisingly, I am not made of glass.” Lana’s voice carried out into the hallway after her, and Kol stuffed her hands into her pockets and marched pointedly away from the lover’s spat. The muffled sounds of the argument could be heard for another dozen paces or so, and then she was blessedly free of it.

Lady Goddess Almighty- this was far more than she’d signed on for. Rescue a sick sith, sure, and maybe fuck up the assholes who ruined her life in the process, that was doable. Get herself chased by gigantic fleets of death machines and have to deal with smartass sith who liked to make jokes about her freedom hidden within flirtations, that was not really within the bounds of what she’d agreed to. Act as a fucking relationship counsellor to a pair of bickering sith who clearly wanted to just jump on each other in a frenzy but for some reason were afraid of, like... some kind of ghostly threesome with a dead guy?

Nope. Nuh uh, no way. Way out of her pay grade.

She was _so_ asking for more money when they got back to Odessen.

With nothing better to do with her time unless they needed her back in the medbay, Kol made her way through the bizarrely twisting corridors- backtracking a few times when she thought she’d gone the wrong way- until she found the crew quarters. She’d been given a small private berth, a blessing in itself, and she closed the door behind her and sank down onto the narrow bed.

It had been an eventful six hours, that was for sure.

Rubbing wearily at her face, she reached for the small side table and pulled her personal datapad from the top drawer, flicking it open to the screen she’d been working on last night before they’d launched the mission. It was a spreadsheet, with a budget for the next three years, based on her earnings from this mission; or rather, it was several possible budgets, all of which sat waiting for her perusal. There was one for Ryloth, because if this all worked according to how the Alliance thought it’d work and Zakuul got toppled, she’d technically be free to return home and resume her duties for the Ministry of Health. Except... Ryloth didn’t really feel like home, and she couldn’t rightly say what it was she wanted to achieve from going back there. Some kind of misplaced guilt, maybe, feeling like she owed something back to her people?

There was a Lorrd plan, working on the assumption that she would ever be welcome in that goddamn university ever again. She was an excellent teacher, damn it, and a brilliant surgeon, and they couldn’t just throw away a resource like that just because they found it personally distasteful. There was a Nar Shaddaa plan, if she went back to helping Elsie... although by the sounds of things, with everything Ysaine had done for her over the past decade, she wasn’t really in need of someone underfoot again.

There was Rishi, of course. Made the most sense to make a plan for the place she was currently living. Not home, of course, Rishi wasn’t any more home than Ryloth was.

She’d spent the hours of flight to Odessen working on them, waiting for a moment of inspiration to strike and for clarity to direct her to a certain path. But, as expected, nothing of the sort came to pass, only the same miserable sort of resignation that seemed to seep into her days like a grey and tar-like miasma; she might’ve nudged a patient towards help for depression, if she’d seen the same symptoms manifest in them, but the thought just made her irritable. She was intelligent, and powerful, and confident in her body and her sexual appeal. She’d changed the lives of millions, not only as a surgeon but also as a teacher and then in her ill-fated tenure as a politician, pioneering revolutionary medical techniques that had improved prosthetic care throughout the galaxy. She was a million fucking light-years away from the frightened, malnourished waif betrayed by her own family in the most horrifying and violent of ways. She was stronger and more successful and she was better than all of the people who’d gotten in her way.

She’d survived. Most of them hadn’t.

So what if her future felt a little grey and hopeless sometimes? At least she was alive to live it. She’d beaten everyone who hadn’t thought she’d make it this far.

She snorted, rolling her eyes in disgust as she tossed the datapad back into the drawer and flopped back on the bed. “Boo hoo, get over yourself,” she muttered, kicking her boots off as she rolled over to stare at the curved bulkhead over head. “You’re fucking thirty-eight, not thirteen.”

Kol’aya ignored the creeping grey bleakness growing in her chest, and pretended to sleep.

* * *

Evie was bored.

That in itself wasn’t a huge revelation- she got bored easily, and Master Ranos had despaired at ever getting her to concentrate on her lessons in the few years they’d been travelling together. Evie wasn’t much one for lessons, didn’t get the need to sit and study and learn airy philosophies about patience and temperance and shit like that. Life was for living, and you only got one of it- what was the point of living it in gloomy old robes being all boring and shit, telling folk off for enjoying themselves? So what if she sometimes got carried away and disrupted folk from their duties, or got them all irate? Folk had to have things to laugh at, and she weren’t gonna sit around waiting for them laughs to manifest by themselves.

She hadn’t been much good at the meditation stuff, or working out them fancy ways of fighting; really, if you asked her, once you had a freakin’ light sword in your hand, you could swing it any which way you wanted, it’d still kill shit. No need for counting off your steps like a right twat.

But she had liked helping folk, and making them laugh, and Ranos had always been good about letting her go with that. Plenty of places hit hard by the war, this far out on the Rim, and plenty of chances to do good. She weren’t much of a healer, but every little bit helped- more than anything she was good for the heavy lifting shit, using these weird powers of hers to clear rubble from the roads and dig out the wells or the water plants.

Sort of why she’d jumped at the chance to help with this Alliance rescue thing in the first place- a tangible way to help folk. Granted, she still weren’t quite sure how rescuing this Nox woman was gonna help in the long run, but she’d made worse bets before. And really, she weren’t here as much else but muscle and a good Zak accent, cause it wasn’t like she had much else going for her in a crowd like this.

The smartest doctor or something like that in the whole universe? She didn’t even understand how blood worked, let alone how someone could convince a brain to work with machine parts. The leader or something of the last free Jedi, green team or something? Had to be right more powerful than her, shit. A sith lady who could control goddamn machines like she were some kind of computer brain? Best she could manage was rigging the dejarik tables at the bar.

The leader of a goddamn spy network named for an old god? The goddamn Empress Regent? The Outlander’s wife?

And then good ol’ Evie, smack in the middle.

She weren’t much one for bouts of self deprecation, but it boggled the mind a little. Only a little, though, then she went right back to laughing at the sheer ludicrous nonsense of it all, and just enjoyed the ride. Weren’t a whole lot for her to do right now while they surged through hyperspace to their super secret waypoint, short of get underfoot, and she was fucking bored. And by her reckoning, if she was bored, then those refugee folk they had hiding down in the bowels of the ship had to be just as bored as she was- so, the only reasonable thing to do was to go and entertain them.

The winding halls of the Gravestone didn’t make a whole lotta sense to her, so she got herself lost a good couple of times, backtracking up and down with her hands in her pockets while she whistled a jaunty tune. It was almost like the damn things changed destination while she was halfway down them, like some kind of carnival funhouse.

Oh- there was a good idea. Interstellar travelling funhouse. Maybe she could float that idea once this whole rebellion thing was done.

Eventually, either by dumb luck or divine providence, she found her way down to the lower levels of the ship, and found the cargo bay that had been converted to a ramshackle living quarters for the refugee village that Lord Bejah had apparently rescued some weeks back. Poor folk’d been living in flimsy towers clinging to the trees for balance, trying to stay above the waterline, trying to live out of reach of the teeth and claws of the beasties in the shadows and the beasties up above. Evie weren’t one for politics, mostly, and she couldn’t say she’d ever personally had a problem with the Zakuulan Empire, but there weren’t a shortage of folk who were suffering under their heel.

Like these poor folk here.

The cargo bay was stuffed full of whatever shitty furniture and clothing hadn’t been consumed by the dampness of the swamp, and there were piles of bedding and hammocks scattered throughout; as she meandered in the door hatch, hands stuffed into her pockets, several dozen sets of eyes swung in her direction, not quite hostile but not quite friendly either. Couldn’t blame ‘em for being skittish, really.

She waved cheerfully, catching sight of a couple of the younglings peeking out from behind crates and parents’ legs. “Ey lah, don’t worry,” she said, tapping the side of her nose as she winked and sank cross-legged onto the floor. “Evie knows the up-down shake, eh? Not like them wandering starfolk.”

Pulling a worn pack of cards from her jacket, she started shuffling them- casually at first, but with increasing flair, fanning them out and cutting them faster, the delightful crackle of proper plastic cards filling the air as she worked her magic. Never got that with holo-interfaces. The good old proper tactile delight of a pack of cards was one she was always eager to share with the world, and by the looks of the curious little faces watching her carefully, the kids were weighing up their caution with their fascination.

There was a little girl closest to her, her hair jet black like her own and her eyes wide with curiosity; Evie fanned the cards in her hand, and held them out towards her. “Pick a card,” she said.

The girl glanced back over her shoulder, as if seeking permission from someone; Evie waited patiently, cards extended, until finally the girl crept shyly forward and pulled a card from between the stack.

“Good, good, get a good look at it, ey?” The girl nodded, and Evie wiggled her hand. “Show it to the rest, then stick it back.”

She complied, and Evie went to work shuffling the deck again, making it even more elaborate than last time. By now, the children had mostly overcome their hesitancy, and had started to crowd around her; even a couple of the grown folk had come over too. The little girl was crouching down right in front of her, watching the cards intently, her expression one of rapt delight. “What’s your name, lah?” she asked, never skipping a beat as she worked.

The girl blinked, coming back to the present. “Uh, Skee,” she said after a moment. “It’s short for Scyva- you know, like the goddess.”

Evie made the appropriate impressed noises. “Fancy name,” she said. “I suppose if you’re named for a goddess, you’re right good with magic, ey?”

Skee shook her head. “No, ma’am,” she said.

“Not at all? Not even if I showed you... this card?” She pulled a card at random from the deck, knowing full well it was not the card Skee had picked. Predictably, Skee shook her head. “What?” she gasped theatrically, rousing a round of giggles from some of the children. “Nah, ey, you’re joshing, ey? This not your card?”

Skee covered her mouth as if to stop herself from laughing, and shook her head again.

“Ey, lah, only some fierce wizard could stop my trick,” she said, waggling a finger at her. She shuffled the cards ferociously, over doing it until the smattering of giggles grew in volume. “I’m onto you. That’s why I know that this is your card.”

She pulled out yet another incorrect card, holding it up victoriously, and this time Skee cracked up laughing with the other children.

“What? Nah, this a trick, ey?”

“That’s not it,” Skee said, face scrunched up with laughter. Even some of the adults were smiling now, and she saw one of them shake their head with a laugh.

“Right then.” She flipped the deck over, fanning them out on the floor with the symbols facing upwards. “Show old Evie your card, then.”

Skee leaned in, along with most of the children, and Evie kept her game face on as Skee slowly frowned. “I don’t see it,” she said, glancing up at her hesitantly.

“What? More tricks? What was your card, ey?”

“Um, the Ace of Coins?” The other children all nodded in agreement, having seen the card when Skee had held it up at the start.

Evie made a great show of rubbing her chin thoughtfully. “Coins, eh? You got a pouch, a purse?” Skee nodded again. “Well, let’s see it then.”

Skee reached down to her pocket and pulled out a grubby little pouch, a leather affair with a tarnished silver clasp that had obviously once been very fine indeed but had been ill-suited to life in the swamp. “Skee,” one of the adults said warningly, her features marking her as family.

Evie waved her hand to reassure them. “All good,” she said quietly. Skee fumbled with the latch of the pouch for a moment, the rust making it a little hard to pop the clasp, but finally it fell open with a dull click.

... and a handful of colourful candies fell out onto the floor between them, the bright wrappers glinting in the light. There were gasps of surprise and delight, and the other children crowded forward immediately while Skee stared dumbstruck.

“Aha!” Evie said, lunging forward and nimbly pretending to pluck a note from amongst the sweets; it was a tattered piece of flimsi, the sort of scrap that might be found in a worn little purse like the one Skee was carrying. “A confession!”

Skee blinked, still blindsighted by the appearance of the sweets. “A... what?”

Evie dramatically unfolded the flimsi and cleared her throat. “The Ace of Coins is in Nennet’s pocket,” she declared, looking around at the assembled children. All eyes turned towards a small boy, his long black hair hanging around his face in dreadlocks; his own eyes widened, and he looked down, patting his pockets until he found one with a slight bulge in it. He reached inside- and pulled out the Ace of Coins, with another few candies for good measure.

The children went wild, screeching and cooing and climbing all over each other to try and get closer to it; Evie, anticipating this, let them scream for a moment or two before reaching forward, gently pushing them to the side. “One sec, one sec, ey,” she said, carefully prising the card from Nennet’s fingers where he was still staring in rapt amazement. She lifted the card up to her face, pretending to inspect it carefully, and then shrugged. “Guess I got done outplayed by a pair of wizards,” she said, and then she made a flicking gesture as if she was going to toss the card up into the air. Instead it vanished, and a small gout of flame belched upwards instead, to the screaming delight of her assembled crowd.

She continued on in that fashion for over an hour, playing tricks with her cards and engaging the children to join her in her antics, until the mood in the cargo bay was one of laughter and light. There was no threat of enemy fleets in here, no cowering in the dark to hide from patrolling skytroopers- just joy and mischief and the noisy sort of nonsense that Evie loved best. The sound of people _living_ , and basking in the joy of sharing life with others.

Evie laughed along with them, content in the knowledge that even if she weren’t a world shaker like the rest of the folk on this ship, she could still stir things up a bit for the regular folk like her.

* * *

Xolani tossed her datapad onto the worn leather cushion beside her, letting her head fall back against the top of the couch. This chamber, some sort of communal crew quarters, still smelled vaguely of the nesting animals that had called the empty ship their home for so many generations; in fact, some of the couches bore scratch marks that unmistakeably came from claws, and there were a few rough lines of stitches, as if the stuffing had been hastily shoved back inside the frame and the leather sewn back up.

It wasn’t really like she had grounds to complain about it, though- there was a limit to what they’d been able to achieve over the last fourteen months or so that the restoration project had been working on the ship. That they had any kind of furniture at all was a phenomenal effort, because it wasn’t like one could simply go sailing out into the swamps with a cargo hold full of comfortable furniture. That sort of activity had the tendency to draw unwanted attention, transporting couches and lamps and bed linens into a damned swamp.

Lord Amariha was quite adamant that this ship, this Gravestone, could be a formidable weapon against Zakuul if properly outfitted, and Xolani had to admit the prospect had some merit. Their flight from Zakuul could very well have ended in tragedy once they had confronted the Eternal Fleet- and quite frankly, given how completely the Fleet had annihilated all other naval threats throughout the galaxy in the last five years, she had half expected their journey to end right there, strewn in a thousand burning pieces of debris across the upper stratosphere. The only crafts that stood even a marginal chance against the Fleet had been Moff Pyron’s contingent, and that was only because the Silencer weapon gave them enough of a fighting chance to disable the attackers before fleeing. Even in her wildest estimations, she could never have imagined how incredibly powerful the Gravestone had proven to be, both with its shielding capabilities and the strength of its omnicannon, a weapon that bore no small resemblance to the Silencer megalaser.

She rubbed wearily at her temples; just because she had doubted the capabilities of this vessel, she had by no means agreed to bear witness to a demonstration. The confrontation with the Eternal Fleet had been... an experience she never wanted to repeat, if possible.

There was a reason why she had quite happily retreated into the less confrontational work required of her as a Lady of Sorrow.

Well-

Her hand drifted up to her necklace, to the ring she wore on a chain instead of on her finger.

-it was one of the reasons.

Before the grief and the memories could take hold of her, a sound caught her attention, and she sat up straighter. It was faint, coming and going in waves that rose and fell above the background noise of the ship, but it sounded distinctly like... someone singing? Curiosity took hold, and she moved to perch on the edge of the couch, straining to hear it.

There it was again- a woman singing.

She rose to her feet, and from where it was poking at an ancient dataport on the wall across from her, Parrot spun its’ battered head towards her, beeping inquisitively at her. She smiled. “It’s alright,” she said, smoothing a hand over Parrot’s head as she passed. “I’ll be back shortly.”

This answer seemed to satisfy it, and it turned back to whatever had caught its’ attention in the first place.

The singing continued, and Xolani turned towards the direction where it seemed strongest. She followed it cautiously, her feet turning her towards the ramp that led sharply in to the bowels of the ship, where the rather bizarrely ominous heart of the Gravestone lay. She had only been down here once, when Lord Amariha had given her a tour prior to the rescue attempt. She did not understand what this thing was, precisely, only that it was a construct that resonated within the Force like a living soul might- despite appearing to be mechanical in origin.

In the circular chamber that housed the heart, the light was far more muted than it was on the upper decks; Xolani blinked, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom, and as she stood there she listened in silence to the song being sung.

It was one she recognised- it was an aria from a popular opera on Zakuul, the Grey Pathways, a dramatic retelling of an old Zakuulan myth about a great warrior following Scyva’s forbidden trek through the underworld as she sought the lost spirit of her youngest son. The play, like most things concerning the Old Gods, was technically considered to be blasphemous, but it particularly had experienced a resurgence of sorts after the presumed death of Prince Thexan. Xolani had even been to see a performance of it several years ago, in an effort to further understand the nuances of Zakuulan culture and to work on her accent and pronunciation of the Zakuulan language- Galactic Common was widely spoken in the streets these days, but it still helped their espionage efforts to be able to blend seamlessly with citizens and soldiers both.

It was, in the nature of most operatic performances, quite a tragic story. Xolani had been struck by the lonely vigil that Scyva undertook, cursed to wait for a son who might never return to her, miserably alone with no hope of... well, _hope_. It had led to a fascination on her part with the goddess, and had been the eventual inspiration for the moniker Lady of Sorrows. She could appreciate all too well the pain and the anguish of travelling through a bizarre and alien landscape on a heart-wrenching quest for a loved one- in a sense, that had been Lana’s journey these last five years, and ultimately her own as well.

But where Lana’s tale had ended in triumphant reunion, she was still lost in the grey pathways of her grief and loneliness, ever seeking for a love who would not come back to her.

She watched, from the doorway, as the singer appeared at last, unsurprised to see that it was Senya. She was wandering around the circumference of the room, hands clasped before her and head bowed, as if she was concentrating on remembering the words and the rhythm of the aria without accompaniment.

For a moment, she just watched. Senya had a beautiful voice, rich and sonorous, and while perhaps she did not have the full range that the aria demanded of the singer, she still compensated admirably. It was a haunting song, a lonely melody that Scyva sang alone in the opera while other performers dressed as ghostly spirits flowed around and over the stage, flitting from the light and stirring up the smoke that billowed around their feet; in the song, Scyva implored the spirits for any word on her son, for any help that they might be able to render to her, standing alone in a weak spotlight on the stage while the smoke swirled past her. It was- when staged well- one of the most powerful pieces of theatre Xolani had ever had the pleasure of witnessing, and the song had a special place in her heart.

So when the aria section drew to a close, Xolani knew what came next- the performance continued of course, but the actress playing Scyva would finally be answered by the spirits, resulting in an almost playful back and forth between the singers. Senya’s voice filled the space as she sang the first line of the refrain.

Without missing a beat, Xolani stepped into the chamber and sang the response, her deep voice perhaps a little out of character for the role of the spirits, but clear and harmonious nonetheless. Senya jumped slightly, spinning on her heel with a hand pressed to her heart as if in alarm, and the look of apprehension on her face eased slowly as Xolani sang back to her; with a shy smile, she sang Scyva’s next line, and Xolani responded again.

The harmony of their voices hung in the air, the echo slowly fading, as they looked at each other across the space. Senya looked suitably bashful, for someone having been caught singing. “I did not realise there were other fans of the operatic arts on board,” she said.

Xolani smiled. “Lady of Sorrows was not a hint at all?”

“In hindsight, maybe,” Senya said wryly. She gestured to the edge of the ramp, where there was a space around the mysterious Heart. “Will you sit with me?”

“I did not mean to intrude-”

“Oh no, it’s not-” Senya laughed, somewhat awkwardly. “I’ll admit, I was seeking distractions. Your company would be welcome.”

They sat before the Heart of the Gravestone, the eerie pulsing light from within making the scene almost surreal. Xolani winced slightly as she climbed down, a twinge in her hip making her suspect that climbing back up again would not be so easy; the perils of aging were inescapable, even for a Jedi. She was mildly comforted by the fact that Senya, likewise, had a hand on her knee as they settled down, their legs hanging over the drop as they sat side by side with the Heart before them.

“I was not expecting you to join us, Master Tirall,” she said, in an attempt to break the silence.

“Nor I you, Madam Sorrow,” Senya replied. “But please, call me Senya. I’d like to hope we established enough of a rapport last time to forgo titles.”

“A fair point- I would be happy for you to call me Xolani.”

Senya smiled at her, and something within her stirred slightly- something that hadn’t moved in a very long time. “Xolani,” she said, as if sampling her name. “I thought your duties on Zakuul as the Lady of Sorrows would have prevented you from accompanying us- surely the Alliance cannot afford to spare you at such a critical juncture?”

Xolani shook herself, bemused by the moment of whimsy that had overtaken her. She’d had attractive women smile at her before- she’d even been married to one for a good number of years. A smile shouldn’t be enough to disarm her, not at her age. “Thankfully, I am not the only Lady of Sorrows,” she said, “and it was felt that my skills would better serve the Alliance on the mission.”

“Oh?”

“I do speak fluent Zakuulan,” she said, switching effortlessly to the language.

Senya smiled again, and Xolani once again felt that kindling light within her. “I had gathered as much, given your flawless rendition of Spirits Refrain.”

“I’d hardly call it flawless,” Xolani said, even though a swarm of butterflies took flight within her stomach at the compliment. “You make a far more admirable Scyva than I do a spirit.”

At this, Senya actually giggled, the sound almost girlish in a way that washed the years away from her altogether. For a moment, Xolani was spellbound by the sound of it, as insensible as a teenage padawan with her first crush again. “You are too kind,” she said, a bashful note in her voice.

Xolani swallowed awkwardly, forcing herself to focus. “Not at all,” she said, her hand drifting up to fidget nervously with the ring on the chain around her neck. “And beyond my familiarity with the language and the city, well- there were concerns about Lana’s ability to conduct herself appropriately. Above all else, the Alliance wished to minimise the impact any extraction mission might have in terms of property damage and lives lost, and one cannot always guarantee discretion when a Sith is involved.”

Senya made a sound of understanding. “I imagine that rescuing one’s spouse from a perilous situation is not one that many can accomplish with a clear head,” she said softly.

Memories of Ziost- of the frantic, panicked holocalls that had come through as the madness of the Emperor had set in, and the agonising silence that had followed until the Battlemaster’s team had brought Surro home to her- swam back into her thoughts, and her fingers tightened around the ring. “I imagine not,” she agreed, just as quietly.

When she looked up, shaking off the memories, Senya was watching her curiously, her gaze fixed on the ring as she twisted it between her fingers. Having been caught staring, Senya smiled awkwardly at her, reaching up to push an errant lock of hair back behind her ear. Clearing her throat, Xolani tried to cover the moment, dropping the ring and letting her hand come to rest on the cool metal floor plate between them. “I will admit, I was not expecting you to join us either,” she said. “Given your reunion with your son, I do not think anyone would have questioned it had you elected to remain on Odessen with your family.”

Senya stilled, and for a moment Xolani was worried she had overstepped the bounds of this tentative friendship building between them. “I...” Senya trailed off, and then let out a small sound that could’ve been a chuckle, perhaps. “I had wondered the same thing myself. It does seem like the obvious choice, after all, and I...” She took a deep breath, as if calming herself. “I could never have dreamed for this, not in a million years. To have my son alive, and with a child of his own...”

When she struggled to continue, Xolani decided to risk putting her hand over hers on the cool metal. Her fingers were warm. “Ona’la is a very kind and gentle young woman,” she said. “It was a great pleasure of mine to see how she helped Thexan to blossom- and Anya is utterly delightful.”

Senya looked up at her, her silver eyes piercing; Xolani felt a shiver pass over her skin at the sight of it. She was a strikingly handsome woman, and it was easy to see how she had won the heart of an emperor. “In our mythology,” she said slowly, surprising her for her choice of subject, “Scyva bore several children, but chose to leave them behind in pursuit of the one she lost.”

Xolani could see the metaphor quite easily, but held her tongue. It was far more important that Senya had space to voice her fears than it was for her to be an arrogant know-it-all.

“Thexan is safe,” Senya continued, “as is my only grandchild. And... as much I love them both with every fibre of my being, they are not the ones who need me right now.”

Her heart broke a little for her. “It is never an easy choice,” she said, “to leave behind the ones we love, to follow a path that might lead to nothing.” Senya’s gaze once again fell to the ring around her neck- only for a moment, but enough for her to curiosity to be abundantly clear. Steeling herself, Xolani reached up with her free hand, her fingers closing carefully around her old wedding ring. “The woman who shared my life is alive, and safe, but she will never again be... herself. I tried for some time to remain in her life, but it was abundantly clear that my presence only exacerbated her distress. So- I made sure that she was in the best care available for her condition, and then I followed a grey, uncertain pathway without her.”

Senya was staring at her, her eyes all but glowing in the dim light of the chamber. Her hand was warm where hers rested over it, but otherwise she did not move.

The silence stretched on, and Xolani began to suspect that she had overstepped her bounds; she began to withdraw her hand, saying “But the metaphor stretches a little thin for me, I think-”

Senya turned her hand over and laced her fingers through hers; Xolani choked a little on the word she’d been trying to say, stuttering to a halt as a fondly familiar flush of heat tickled up her arm and into her chest, warming her all the way through.

“It’s never easy,” Senya said, turning back to face the Heart again. “But it’s nice to have people who understand.”

Xolani slowly swallowed, trying to calm her racing heart. “It is,” she said quietly.

* * *

“I think we’ve done all we can for now,” Bejah said to him, sliding the panel back onto the wall, covering the circuit panel the two of them had been working on.

“Agreed,” Koth said, wiping his brow with the back of his arm. He glanced over at the navigation console, where the number of warning lights flashing had dropped to only a handful in the time they’d been working, as opposed to what had seemed like several hundred when they’d all but lurched into hyperspace with the barrage of the Eternal Fleet still bouncing off their shields.

“We blew out a few more power cells than I was hoping trying to break atmo, so I hope your crew were able to get the supplies we asked them for, because we’re going to need all of it and more.”

“I gave them the shopping list, and Asylum is pretty good for parts.” He packed away the tools scattered over the deck, wiping away the oil and grease on them with an old rag. “I mean, as good as you’re gonna get when you’re shopping for a centuries old boat that doesn’t adhere to any modern building codes. I gotta say, I know I’ve said it already, but it’s just phenomenal what you did to get this thing flying again, honestly.”

Bejah beamed shyly, her eyes dropping to the floor. “It’s nothing, really,” she said bashfully. Hard to remember sometimes that she was supposed to be one of the most fearsome Sith Lords in the galaxy, when she couldn’t hold a conversation without blushing or getting tongue tied, even with her husband. Koth liked them both, to be honest, even if Revel was a little more unscrupulous than he would have normally picked in his associates. “You were such a wonderful pilot, the Gravestone just absolutely wanted to dance for you.”

He laughed. “Don’t worry, she’ll get the chance,” he said, patting the console affectionately. “We’ll get her all gussied up and go dancing.”

A commlink beeped, and Bejah reached into her pocket. “Hey Nikos,” she said quietly, half turning away from Koth as if she was too shy to talk to her own husband in front of others.

“Hey baby,” came the cheerful response. “How long we got ‘til landfall? I got hot chocolate and marshmallows down here, and two little terrors tryin’ to crawl up my legs to get to ‘em.”

Bejah giggled, the sound so at odds with the image of Lord Amariha the Mecha-deru. “You’ll spoil their dinner,” she said, already wandering towards the door.

Koth smiled to himself and shook his head, turning back to the console; he could hear Revel say something in response, but the words were muffled as the door slid closed after her. They were a cute pair, and their kids were even cuter, but he couldn’t quite shake the bittersweet memory of their son asking eagerly if he had children with Lana. Given that that very evening, Lana had drunkenly propositioned him in a fit of grief and loneliness, it wasn’t likely ever gonna be something he just _forgot_.

From behind him came a faint snore.

He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes landing on the source of the noise; Jedi Master Hervoz was slumped in a chair in the corner, out from under foot from where he seemed to have dropped the moment they’d come aboard. His impressively long legs were sprawled out in front of him, and he had his arms crossed while his head lolled at what had to be a super uncomfortable angle. If it weren’t for the silver threaded through his dark hair and the lines on his face, he could’ve passed as any new recruit, asleep in the mess hall at the end of a rigorous day of training. He looked exhausted- but, if he was honest with himself, that didn’t stop him from also looking unfairly attractive either.

He wasn’t quite sure why the Jedi was with them- he’d heard something about a problem on Corellia,- but he wasn’t about to turn down free help for a suicide run like this. Master Hervoz had been quite the asset to the team, and he hadn’t even mentioned Koth’s moronic gaff from back at that party when he’d blurted out the dumbest phrase in existence in a moment of stress and awe.

Even thinking of it now made him cringe to himself. _Damn, he’s a big boy_. What a fucking idiot, who even said that sort of thing out loud? An idiot, that’s who. Bet them Jedi folk didn’t have the time of day for idiots.

As if his own mortification was powerful enough to disturb others, Master Hervoz frowned slightly, his head jerking and his eyes flying open. He looked like he’d been about to fall out of the chair and had caught himself, and as Koth opened his mouth to offer assistance, the other man put a hand up to his forehead.

“Oh, seven bloody stars,” he said hoarsely, wincing like he was expecting his head to crack open. “Am I dead?”

What the hell was he supposed to say to that? “Uh...” Glancing around, he spotted a canteen over by the toolbox where he and Bejah had been working, and snatched it up; he offered it carefully to the Jedi, and tried not to shiver when their fingers brushed against one another as he took it. “You think your afterlife includes me? I’m flattered, Master Jedi, but I don’t think it works that way.”

He huffed out a laugh, wincing again, before tipping up the canteen and taking a long drink. As he did so, the light moved over his face, and Koth caught sight of a long line of dried blood running down the side of his face from up closer to his eyebrow. “Thank you,” Master Hervoz said, holding back the canteen.

“Hold onto that for just a second for me,” Koth said, turning back to the toolbox and fishing out the least dirty rag from within. He took the canteen from him and upended it onto a corner of the rag, moistening the fabric sufficiently. “You’ve got, uh... you’ve got a bit of, um...”

Master Hervoz put a hand up to his temple, wincing again when his fingers came into contact with the spot. “Ah,” he said, somewhat embarrassed. “That might explain the headache, then.”

“ _Might?_ ” Koth asked incredulously.

“It’s been a very long time since I’ve had to do anything quite so- _ow!_ ” He cringed back slightly as Koth touched the wet cloth to the side of his head.

“I barely even touched you-”

“It still hurt!”

Koth snorted. “Didn’t know Jedi were made of glass,” he said, making a second attempt to clean the injury. There was a tiny sliver of skin with a colourful bruise flowering around it, but it didn’t look like it’d need stitches or synth-skin, thankfully.

Master Hervoz made a scoffing noise, and if Koth didn’t know better, he would’ve said he looked a little embarrassed. “We are not made of glass,” he said, almost sullenly. “As I was saying, it’s been quite a few years since I’ve been out in the field. My duties were always predominantly clerical, so I was concerned that perhaps I was... out of shape, shall we say.”

“What, for real?” Koth asked, stepping back to look at him. He ran his gaze over the older man. “That’s a joke, right?”

Now he definitely looked embarrassed. “I assure you, it is not,” he said, somewhat haughtily, as if he was attempting to gather together the shreds of his dignity.

Snorting in disbelief, Koth stepped back up to his side, putting one hand under his chin to turn his face a little more to the light so he could finish up. “Thought you were wearing your helmets for the jaunt inside the Treasury,” he said, trying to ignore the fact that he could feel Master Hervoz’s throat move as he swallowed; his stubble was just starting to grow in, the gentle sandpaper feel of it rough against his fingers. “How’d you manage this?”

Master Hervoz winced. “I... may have been rather inconsiderate towards Doctor Torr,” he said.

“What, the _doctor_ did this?” When Master Hervoz didn’t answer, Koth pulled back a little to look at him. “That why you just bore up in silence and didn’t tell anyone about it?”

“Well, I- I mean, yes, but- everything happened so fast, and then, with the escape, and the Gravestone...” He trailed off rather helplessly, and Koth honestly couldn’t say whether he’d ever met anyone as much of an unparalleled social disaster as this man was.

Well. At least Master Hervoz hadn’t blurted out ‘ _damn, he’s a big boy_ ’ during their first meeting.

“Well,” he said, stepping back and reluctantly letting go of his chin, “you’re cleaned up, but you should probably get the doctor to check you for a concussion or something, that can’t be good waking up in that much pain.”

Master Hervoz just waved a hand. “I don’t want to inconvenience anyone,” he started to say.

“Hey, inconveniencing us would be if you passed out from a concussion and we had to drag your sorry ass back to the Gravestone along with Nox,” he said, then stopped. “I’m sorry, that was a little uncalled for, I’m sure your ass is great.”

Of course it was. Those leather pants under the Knight armour didn’t leave much to the imagination, but he couldn’t just come out and say ‘ _by the way, I was ogling your ass earlier, don’t worry, it’s fantastic_ ’. Well, he probably could, but you know, he wanted to actually keep living and not die of mortification.

Master Hervoz made a high-pitched noise behind him, and when he glanced back at him he was rather pointedly staring at the wall with his hands clutched tight in his lap.

“You good?”

“Oh, yes yes, I’m fine, nothing to worry about,” Hervoz said quickly. Too quickly for it to be the truth. “I’ll just, um... I should get out from under your feet, shouldn’t I, how long until we make landfall?”

Koth tossed the soiled rag back onto the mess near the toolbox. “Hey, I never said you were underfoot, Master Jedi,” he said, although it soured the enthusiasm in his belly a little to hear him so desperate to get away from him. “Shouldn’t be much longer though, really, we should be-”

As if on cue, the console started flashing as the hyperdrive began to prepare the ship for slowing. “We should be coming out in the next two or three minutes,” he finished, gesturing to the light. “And really, I know I’ve got a bit of a fat head sometimes, but there’s plenty of room in here for you too. Honestly.”

Master Hervoz looked utterly torn, as if the relative safety of the door was warring with his desire to stick around and put his foot in it further. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m not really... cut out for all of this.”

“What, talking?”

“No,” he spluttered, eyes darting away immediately. “Well- maybe. I don’t know. The adventuring sort of... thing.”

Koth crossed his arms. “But you’re here,” he said pointedly.

He sighed miserably. “I couldn’t just expect the Alliance to take in my Order without some kind of compensation,” he said. “There are almost one hundred of us, and to house and feed that many mouths, when the Odessen colony is already struggling? I’m not a fool, I know I need to earn my keep.”

Koth opened his mouth to say ‘ _that’s ridiculous_ ’ and found that he actually couldn’t say that- because he had no idea whether or not that was a ridiculous expectation of the Alliance. He didn’t really know anything extensive about the Lord Wrath, or Master Dawnstar, or the way they conducted themselves. For all he knew, maybe the provision of basic amenities was commonly held hostage in Republic and Empire settlements until the inhabitants assisted in some way or another.

So instead he just nodded in acknowledgement. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said quietly. “If there’s anything I can do to help, just shout, yeah?”

Master Hervoz looked relieved at his answer, rubbing anxiously at the side of his face where the injury was. “I appreciate that.”

“Hey, be careful now, you don’t want to poke it ‘til it bleeds again.”

“Oh. Oh of course.”

They stared at each other awkwardly, until Koth cleared his throat and looked away. “So, yeah...”

“Captain Vortena?”

“Hmm? Oh, call me Koth.”

Master Hervoz brightened so obviously that Koth might’ve laughed if he wasn’t so enthralled with how handsome it made him look. “Koth,” he said, the Corellian accent making it sound utterly delightful. “I just wanted to say thank you.”

Koth grinned at him. “You’re welcome, Master Jedi.”

“If you’re to be Koth, then you should call me Navin.”

“Far enough, Navin. My pleasure.”

The hyperdrive beeped again, and Koth turned back to the console, taking his seat at the pilot’s chair as the seething blue outside the windows began to drag slowly into lines of white; they slowly resolved into distinct lines instead of a mass blur, and then the blue fell away entirely. The sky outside was black, and the white lines were now spots, the shining spark of distant stars. The Gravestone shuddered slightly as they decelerated, and a few more warning lights came back on on the dash before him.

But they had made it. Ahead of them, several million miles distant, sat an immense gas giant, and somewhere below the first layer of clouds lay Asylum.

There were no waiting battleships, no flagship for the Eternal Fleet. They had done it. They’d escaped without leaving a trail.

Koth grinned and sat back in his chair, resisting the urge to pump a fist in the air.

Alliance one, Zakuul zero.


	4. Chapter 4

_Asylum, Zakuulan Imperial Territories, Unknown Regions_

“No,” Kol’aya said, crossing her arms, “absolutely not.”

On the screen before her, the man who Senya had referred to as Heskal thinned his lips in displeasure. “It was not a request,” he said haughtily, but she didn’t let him continue.

“And it isn’t possible. Turn your lip up all you want, she’s not leaving the ship.”

Sitting up in the bed in the centre of the medbay, Kallathe growled softly. “It might be nice for requests _regarding_ me to be _directed_ at me,” she said sourly.

Kol’aya had to fight the urge to roll her eyes. “Darth Nox has only recently endured a rather harrowing health crisis, and as her current medical provider, I cannot under any circumstances endorse her undertaking any high risk activities. She is to continue on bedrest for the next few days-”

“Oh, will you be joining me, doctor?” Kallathe said. “To make sure that I definitely stay in the bed?”

“Shut up,” Kol’aya said, without turning around to see what would undoubtedly be a filthy smirk on the Sith’s face. “Darth Nox cannot visit your commune, or whatever the hell it is. If you wish to have an audience with her, you can come down to the docks and come to the Gravestone.”

On the other side of the bed, Lana made a slight noise of dissent. “I’m not sure it’s particularly wise to allow Zakuulan mystics access to the Gravestone,” she said.

“The Scions are our allies,” Senya said pointedly, from where she stood beside the small table where the holocomm had been placed. It did make it seem remarkably like it was Senya and Heskal standing off against the three of them. “The Alliance has already taken in a great number of their Order, and the Lady of Sorrows’ network helped many of those to escape from their hunters in the first place. They are not a threat.”

“I don’t care if they’ve got _Best Friends Forever_ necklaces waiting for us in their clubhouse,” Kol said, “Nox is not leaving the ship.”

“And again, with the conversation happening _about_ me instead of _with_ me,” Kallathe said sourly. “Am I invisible? I feel like I’m invisible.”

Lana sighed. “Dear,” she said warningly.

“I used to be one of the most- if not _the_ most- formidable Sith in the entirety of the galaxy. And now I’m treated like an insipid invalid-”

Kol turned to face her. “You literally went into cardiac arrest less than twenty-four hours ago,” she said flatly. “You still have poison in your blood that your body is still trying to process. You. Are. Still. Sick.”

Behind her, Heskal laughed, and it sent an unpleasant shiver up her spine. “Perhaps we can come to an agreement that suits both parties,” he said, his tone far more amicable than it had been a moment earlier. “Destiny cannot be denied, and it is written in the stars that the Outlander requires our guidance.”

“I have a name,” Kallathe spat, “and I have never- in my entire life- _ever_ wanted or needed the guidance of a _man_.”

Someone entered the holo behind Heskal, a young woman with a broad crown of curly hair; she had the same eerie pale eyes as the leader of the sect, but where his pale skin made him look sickly, her dark skin made her eyes look like burning flecks of ice. She murmured quietly to Heskal, who bowed his head to hear her message, and then nodded to her. “A compromise, then,” he said. He had his hands clasped behind his back, and his body language seemed to scream condescension. “It is imperative that we meet with the Alliance, so we will accept three of your number in the Outlander’s place.”

Kallathe cackled. “I _am_ worth three of you, even half dead!”

“Fine, fine,” Lana said briskly, “Senya, Xolani and myself shall-”

“Ah ah, Lord Beniko,” he said, waving a finger at her as if she was a naughty child, “I’d thank you not to make assumptions about my instructions.”

Lana quite visibly bristled. “I will not be _tutted_ at by some half-rate, discount Jedi mystic clinging to the crumbs of glory,” she snarled, but Senya intervened.

“Tell us what you require of us, and we will consider it,” she said quickly, casting pleading looks in Lana’s direction. The Sith was seething, her eyes far brighter than normal, and Kol could’ve sworn she could feel something crackling over her skin, like static electricity in the air. It was unpleasant, to say the very least, and a terrifying reminder of the sort of power these people threw around without a second thought.

Heskal opened his mouth to respond, but then paused; his brow creased slightly with a frown, and a slight gasp escaped from his lips.

Senya, likewise, frowned. “Heskal?”

He did not answer, a hand instead going up to his head; he looked disoriented, almost dizzy, and when he swayed visibly, the young woman from earlier rushed back into view to support him before he toppled over.

“... what are- Kallathe! Stop that!”

Kol’aya turned at Lana’s cry to find Kallathe looking several shades paler than she had done moments ago; her eyes had flared with a bloom of blood red, and her teeth were bared as she stared at Heskal with a look in her eyes that bordered on rabid.

Lana took her firmly by the chin and turned her head to the side, breaking her eye contact with the leader of the Scions; he stumbled almost instantly, shaking his head as if coming out of a daze. “What-”

“Consider what I would be capable at full strength,” Kallathe spat, though her voice shook tremendously, “and do not insult me again.”

“What’s going on?” Kol said, her medscanner beeping ominously. “Your blood pressure just spiked, what did you just do?”

“Something she will _not_ be doing again,” Lana said coldly, holding Kallathe’s gaze when she glared at her.

Heskal’s eyes were burning coldly as he straightened, brushing his hands down the front of his robes to smooth out some imaginary wrinkle. “An unnecessary display of bravado,” he said, his words clipped and rigid with anger.

Kallathe’s eyes slid to the side to stare at him, even as Lana held her face firmly facing away from the holo. “I know your fears, Heskal,” she said. “Remember that next time you think it appropriate to declare yourself my guide or mentor.”

“Enough,” he snarled, his mask of cold indifference slipping ever so slightly. “Three shall attend to us, or we shall cut our ties with the Alliance.”

Senya closed her eyes. “Heskal,” she said pleadingly.

“The Dowager Empress, the doctor, and the girl from Terminus. We shall expect you within the hour.” He disconnected the call before any further arguments could arise, and a painfully awkward silence fell upon the room. Kol’aya, for her part, stood frozen with something that teetered between panicked fear at being singled out and furious irritation at being summoned like some kind of mindless drone.

Lana made an exasperated sound, breaking the finely spun tension. “Well, that could’ve gone better,” she said stiffly, finally having let go of Kallathe’s face. The Sith Pureblood was laying back against the pillows on the raised bed, her deep pink skin now pale and wan; she looked grimly satisfied with herself, if nothing else, and whatever it was that she’d done, Kol’aya knew instinctively that- as a doctor- she needed to discourage it from occurring again.

She was breathing heavily, a faint wheeze coming from between her lips, but she still grimaced in an expression that seemed like it was supposed to be a smile. “I will not tolerate disrespect,” she said, apparently well pleased with herself. “I would have killed him for the insult five years ago, and I have much to do if I am to remind the galaxy that Darth Nox is not to be disrespected.”

“Why must you push yourself?” Lana asked, pure exasperation in her voice. “Is it really so important to you that you would risk your health, risk your _life_ , just to win a- a... a metaphorical pissing contest?”

Kallathe merely grinned at her. “Yes,” she said simply.

Lana put a hand up to her head, bracing her forehead in her palm. “Is it not enough to simply be alive?” she asked incredulously. “Must you be so determined to vex me so soon after I got you back?”

Kallathe was silent for a long moment, the smug grin slowly easing from her face until there was nothing but bitter frustration there instead. She closed her eyes, and said quietly “Valkorion considers it a sensible decision to ally with the Scions. I am not interested in any course of action that he finds appropriate.”

Kol’aya, thoroughly sick of these mind games played between supernaturally powered creatures who had no concern for mundane people like herself, interrupted. “I’m not going,” she said bluntly, addressing her comments to the room.

Lana looked like she was fighting not to roll her eyes as she turned towards her. “I beg your pardon?” she said.

“I’m not going,” Kol repeated. “I was hired to make sure that Nox made it safely out of Zakuul, without dying, and that’s it. I was not hired to go and be some kind of... _ambassador_ , or whatever the fuck they want with me, to a group of magician cultists.”

“You were hired to work for the Alliance,” Lana said, coming around the end of the bed to stand before her. “And that entails whatever work is necessary to ensure the success of this mission- so you will go to this meeting-”

“Like fucking hell I will!”

“This is not a negotiable point, Doctor Torr.”

“I am not some fucking Imperial peon that you can order around and expect me to lick your boots eagerly-”

A hand touched her shoulder, and she recoiled violently, hands flying up as if to ward off an attack. Senya stood beside her, her mouth open as if she’d been about to speak, but her eyes had gone wide at Kol’aya’s wild response. “My apologies, doctor, I didn’t mean to alarm you,” she said carefully.

Her heart was thundering in her throat, and with some difficulty, she swallowed down the angry snarl threatening to push past her lips and nodded jerkily. “It’s fine,” she said, her voice cracking slightly. “I get a little jumpy about getting grabbed from behind.”

“A sensible fear. You have my deepest apologies.”

She laughed, the sound slightly hysterical. She really, truly doubted that the fucking Dowager Empress of Zakuul understood why she was afraid of being touched unexpectedly, or had ever had to live with that particular fear in her heart.

She didn’t say that though.

“I just wanted to take a moment to be the voice of reason here,” Senya continued, eyeing her warily in the wake of her bitter laugh. “I cannot explain the motivations that drive Heskal and his Scions, nor can I explain their choice of guests, but the Alliance cannot turn down their assistance-”

“I am not the Alliance,” Kol’aya said.

“And no one is asking you to be,” Senya answered patiently. “But we are all of us, in our own way, trying to put good back into the universe- is it really so much to ask for an hour of your time while we wait for the repairs to be completed on the ship?”

What she heard was ‘ _can’t you just compromise your physical comfort for the good of everyone again?_ ’ and what she heard was ‘ _if you were really a good person you’d do this thing for us_ ’ and it didn’t matter if that wasn’t what Senya meant at all.

_If you hadn’t drawn so much attention to yourself in the first place, those slavers wouldn’t have been interested in you at all. If you’d kept your head down like we told you to, none of this would’ve happened. Your brother would still be alive._

She bit the inside of her cheek and fought back the wave of self-loathing and misery within herself. “Fine,” she said, looking away. “One hour. Not like I give a shit what they want.”

Senya took a deep breath. “Thank you,” she said quietly, touching her arm again with a little more deliberateness this time; Kol’aya didn’t jump, seeing the movement out of the corner of her eye, but she still didn’t like it nonetheless. “I will find Miss Che.”

She left the room in silence, and Kol stood quietly fuming, alternating between blinking back tears as she pressed her lips together furiously, and fighting the urge to start the argument all over again with a shouted ‘ _and another thing!_ ’. When she glanced over at the two remaining Sith in the room, Darth Nox looked far too smug for her own good, despite having only moments earlier stressed her already fragile body to the brink.

“Right,” she said, wiping aggressively at her eyes and just telling herself it was hayfever; goddamn old ship. “You are to remain in bed-”

“There you go with that ‘ _telling me what to do_ ’ nonsense again.”

“-or you will _die_ , and that will be because I make _sure_ > you die. For fuck’s sake, have some sense of self-preservation, you frustrating woman.”

Kallathe and Lana looked at each other, and Kallathe slowly smiled. “You said exactly that to me while we were on Yavin,” she said, almost gleefully.

“That does not mean that she has the patience to deal with your nonsense as I do,” Lana said, without missing a beat.

“You don’t have very good bedside manner for a doctor, you know,” Kallathe said, turning back to Kol’aya.

“Yeah, funny that, it’s almost like I don’t like being relentlessly belittled by people far more powerful than me while I’m trying to do them a favour and working outside of my preferred skill set.”

Lana’s voice was cold and precise as always- if she hadn’t seen the woman in tears over her wife’s unconscious body on Zakuul, she would’ve thought her to be made of ice- as she stepped in front of her again. “My apologies for this situation, doctor. I trust you understand the severity of this situation, and the implications for the Alliance?”

“I don’t need to be told to behave by a fucking Sith,” Kol spat. “Don’t worry- I don’t really give a shit about your precious little Alliance, but I know when to bow and scrape like a good little peon.”

Lana frowned slightly. “The nature of this Alliance is not-”

Kol’aya laughed, cutting her off. “Don’t give me that. The Alliance is _great_ for the people in power, just like the Republic and the Empire and Zakuul, but it sucks for everyone else. What’s the Alliance doing to combat Zakuul? Oh, that’s right, they’re blowing up Star Fortresses- not providing aid to the most devastated planets, not assisting the millions of displaced peoples, not stepping in to provide structure to places that have fallen into anarchy and lawlessness, nope. Just killing. Just gonna overthrow a tyrant and pat yourselves on the back for a job well done and go home, yeah?”

Lana’s expression was icy, and if she were a lesser woman, she might have cowered before it; as if was, she held her ground, chin held high. “Your opinion is noted, thank you doctor,” she said stiffly. “I suggest you hurry along, lest your tardiness cause further issues.”

It was a dismissal if ever she’d heard one, and she bit the inside of her lip to stop herself from snarling a response. She was an idiot for thinking things would be any different helping this Alliance, thinking it would change a single damn thing in the long run. So the Sith and the Jedi were holding hands and smiling pretty for the public, so what? It didn’t mean a fucking thing for the people they trod on to get to the sunshine.

She nodded jerkily, turning on her heel and stalking from the room.

* * *

_Palace of the Eternal Dragon, Zakuul, Wild Space_

Arcann hadn’t slept.

It was early, just after dawn, and he hadn’t even gone near his bed yet. The closest he’d come to sleep in the last twenty-four hours was... well, it was probably the vague half hour he’d spent in the shower yesterday, zoning out completely in the aftermath of that unsatisfying sexual encounter. He’d missed the entirety of the planned celebrations, and even knowing he hadn’t been in the mood to attend them in the first place didn’t change his irritation at having been denied the opportunity to _refuse_ to go. And he could’ve gone, honestly- he could’ve dumped the escalating emergency on one of his generals, or even Vaylin, and no one would’ve questioned him for the choice to attend his own party instead.

Nobody was allowed to question him. He was the Emperor.

Untouchable.

... but better that he stayed awake, so that nobody could launch a surprise attack against him while he was most vulnerable. He wouldn’t put it past his father to do that, to attack him in the dark like a coward. He wouldn’t be caught unawares, oh no, not him, Valkorion wouldn’t touch him.

Not again.

He smeared his hand over his eyes, blinking back the burning exhaustion; he’d discarded the mask some time ago, panicked and frenzied, and now he was paying the price for spending so many hours reading without the optical support for his damaged eye. His head felt prickly, and he was having a lot of trouble focussing, but he couldn’t stop now.

He’d been reading everything- literally everything- that his intelligence network could dig up regarding the doctor in the strike team. Doctor Kol’aya Torr, twi’lek, neurosurgeon and osteoprosthetic specialist, politican, lecturer... she was a formidable woman indeed. In the hours after the attack on the Treasury, information had begun to trickle through identifying the other terrorists, and their files slowly grew as they waited patiently for his attention- but he ignored them. His instincts told him that the doctor was the weak link in the chain, that with the right kind of pressure placed upon her, he could use her to bring this damnable Alliance down like a house of cards.

Besides, the moment the unmasked human had been identified, Vaylin had snatched her file up herself. He didn’t understand the obsession, but it was one less opponent for him to worry about. Anyway, it was the wrong one to focus on, because Doctor Torr was going to be the one to bring him victory over the Alliance.

So he read her journal articles, and the papers she’d published. He watched her lectures. He tried to make sense of the intensely specific medical and biochemical jargon, and follow along with the topics. He read the handful of laws and reforms that she’d cosponsored on Ryloth, before fleeing from her post and into obscurity several years earlier. And he tried to find her early history, but found repeatedly that the Hutt occupiers of Ryloth had not been ones for detailed record keeping of their population. There was next to nothing on her prior to her enrollment in a college preparatory course at the age of fifteen- an impressively young age to be seeking preadmission.

She was a stern, intelligent woman, who did not seem to exude a great deal of warmth; in fact, he struggled to find any footage or photos of her smiling at all. She had next to no personal relationships of any significance- all of which had been thoroughly investigated years earlier when his medical team had apparently tried to recruit her and failed- and nothing at all recorded for her next of kin. She couldn’t have sprung from nowhere, but all leads into her family over the last five years had amounted to nothing more than dead ends and smoke screens.

She was hiding too much. She was quite obviously _trying_ to hide too much, so much so that the gaps in her history were like flashing neon lights, calling attention to the discrepancies. And she was the weak link, make no mistake about that- the only alien beside Nox herself, the only non-Force user, bound and cuffed by her own alleged allies.

He was going to find her, and he was going to bring both her and the damned Alliance to their knees for daring to defy him and choose his father over him.

Kol’aya Torr was going to bring him the victory he deserved.

* * *

_Asylum, Zakuulan Imperial Territories, Unknown Regions_

Asylum was an unremarkable port in every way, a station just like every other mining hub across the galaxy; though it technically fell under the banner of Zakuul’s territories (although, really, didn’t everything these days?), there were no skytroopers patrolling the streets, no posters of the glorious Emperor Arcann that had escaped the threat of graffiti- draconic horns seemed to be a common motif, as did elaborately oversized mustaches or comically exaggerated lips painted over the top of the black mask. The streets of Asylum were cold and filthy, the cyclonic winds of the gas giant below them not quite reaching this high, but the altitude not helping with the temperature. There was a fine layer of grit over most surfaces, something vaguely tar-like when you tried to wipe it away, as if the dust was sticky.

There were miners, of course, because that’s what Asylum was, a mining platform- but there was also an abundance of refugees, like the ones crowded in the cargo hold of the Gravestone, and the general lack of oversight by any sort of organised Zakuulan security force meant that the most powerful factions in the city were criminal in nature. Unsupervised and perched within a few hours flight of Zakuul, Asylum seemed to hold the dubious honour of being some sort of smuggling hub in the Galactic West. It worked well enough for their purposes, needing a port without a great deal of security to concern themselves with, where no one was particularly loyal to Zakuul or Arcann or anyone but their own self interests.

Kol wasn’t bothered by it- she’d lived on Nar Shaddaa for crying out loud, and had spent the last four years living in a literal pirate cove- and Evie seemed utterly at home, sauntering down the street with her hands in her pockets like she didn’t have a care in the world. Senya was the only one who seemed tense, but... who knew, maybe the woman was just naturally uptight. The only Zakuulan she’d ever spent any time around before this mission was Thexan, and he hadn’t exactly been the most relaxed individual either.

Maybe that was just how Zaks were- or maybe it was just how that particularly family tended to be. Sure seemed like the current Emperor needed to chill the fuck out most of the time.

Evie started whistling cheerfully as they walked, and Kol gritted her teeth.

“I’m sorry that both of you have been drawn into this,” Senya said suddenly, as they veered around an overturned hovercart; the driver of the cart was arguing vehemently with three thuggish looking individuals, one of whom had an impressive scorch mark over the front of their vest where the cart had apparently run them over. “The Scions are... not an easy group to deal with, even at the best of times.”

Kol snorted. “You seemed pretty keen to get on their good side,” she said. She’d diverted back to her bunk before departing, rather aggressively reapplying her makeup. She was probably wearing a little more glitter gel on her lekku than she liked to normally- and goddess, she was not looking forward to seeing if the smog in the air had been thick enough to stain her slicked skin- and her black stiletto heeled boots were more suited to a nightclub than a mining port, but fuck it all. Scions and Sith and everyone in between had been getting under her skin, and she wanted to feel good. Powerful. She wanted to shine.

Fuck anyone who thought they could walk all over her, she’d just stab them with her stiletto boots.

Senya sighed softly. “The Scions were a powerful faction in my- in Valkorion’s court,” she said. “The marriage of a Knight’s skills with a Scion’s power was one of the most remarkable pairings the galaxy has ever seen- and if your Alliance is to truly have every advantage over Zakuul, we must sway the Scions to our cause.”

“Not my Alliance,” Kol said quickly. “I’m only here for the money.”

“Hmm.” Senya didn’t respond to that, and they walked in silence for a few blocks. “Zakuulan culture has always been one of duality, and without the Scions as the counterbalance to the Knights, it will not sustain itself for much longer. I would prefer- for the sake of the lives at risk- that we find a peaceful solution in these meetings.”

Gritting her teeth for a moment, Kol was pleased at sounding relatively polite when she said “I’m not here to be an Alliance negotiator. I’m no-one’s ambassador. I’m literally just here because they asked for me, and I’m being paid.”

“And because you do not want to be the cause of undue suffering,” Senya said. When Kol glanced at her, she smiled faintly, but it was a tired gesture. “I was a Knight-Hunter, tasked with retrieving those who had defied the throne- mostly those considered traitors, our own people... but sometimes it did include bounties.”

Kol felt her blood run cold.

“Please, do not be afraid,” Senya said quickly, evidently realising the poor choice of words. “You have nothing to fear from me, that life is long behind me. What I meant to say, and perhaps should have started with, is that I remember the details of your arrest and escape, and I know that you originally agreed to return to Zakuul so as not to draw the ire of the Exarch down on your people.”

Senya drew to a stop before a large warehouse, unremarkable in a city full of them, and Evie was meandering a good few feet behind them. “I think you don’t know nearly as much about me as you’d like to think you do, ma’am,” Kol said quietly.

“Perhaps,” she agreed. “But that is a discussion for another time.”

“Don’t want ol’ Evie taking in your gabbing, ey?” she said, drawing even with them; she winked conspiratorially. “All good- Evie can keep her mouth shut when it ain’t her business.”

“Can Evie talk about herself in something other than the third person?” Kol snapped.

Evie just grinned. “Mysteries abound, luv.”

Senya just shook her head tiredly and put her hand to the guest panel beside the single door in the wall; the warehouse had a large hangar style door that was obviously for moving heavy machinery in and out, with a smaller portal for workers to come and go in the interim. The panel lit up at the touch of her hand, and after a moment, a view screen appeared above it. “State your name and business,” came a voice, but no speaker was visible in the screen.

“This is fucking ridiculous, they were expecting us-”

“Senya Tirall, Doctor Kol’aya Torr, and Evie Che, as requested by High Seeker Heskal,” Senya said, shooting Kol a warning look.

There came no response, and Kol crossed her arms impatiently- but after a moment, the door slid open silently to allow them entry. The hallway behind was well lit, the tarnished metal floor partially covered by colourful rugs; there were fixtures on the walls, tapestries and paintings and the like, as if they had tried their best to turn this drafty building into a worthy home. The wind whistled through the rusted cracks in the exterior walls, and made the illusion of grandeur that much more pitiful to look upon.

There was nobody waiting to greet them within, and after a moment’s hesitation, Senya stepped through the door, closely followed by Evie. “Because this doesn’t scream ominous at all,” Kol muttered, reluctantly bringing up the rear. She honestly didn’t give a shit why these goddamn mystics wanted to speak to her- all she wanted was to get this meeting over and done with as quickly as possible.

In the first chamber at the end of the hallway, they finally found an actual person- the same young woman that had been seen briefly in the call with Heskal, when Kallathe had attacked him. “Greetings,” she said, her Zakuulan accent far thicker than Senya’s, and her silvery eyes far more unnerving. She had a broad cloud of dark hair around her face, tight curls that bounced slightly as she nodded towards them. “We are grateful that you were able to attend so quickly.”

“Weren’t given much of a choice in the matter,” Kol said loudly.

“Would’ve come faster for sure if I’d known I’d be inconveniencing such a lovely lady,” Evie said, leaning casually against a nearby pillar.

“ _Evie_ ,” Senya said warningly.

The young woman didn’t seem to mind- or even notice- Evie’s untimely flirtations. “If you will follow me,” she said, as mildly as her first statement. “High Seeker Heskal is waiting for you.”

She led them deeper into the warehouse, where some semblance of remodelling seemed to have been undertaken to make it more suitable for habitation. The larger spaces of the interior had been broken up into actual rooms, and through a few open doorways they could see beds and desks and signs of life- even if they saw no actual occupants. The air crackled with the same sort of power she’d come to expect when spending copious amounts of time around Force-users, the unpleasant sort of static-like sensation like she was at risk of zapping herself with the next surface she touched.

“How many Scions reside here?” Senya asked their guide, as if she was uncomfortable with the silence.

“We number less than two dozen,” she said simply, not even looking back over her shoulder at them. “The Alliance assisted some of our number in escaping, but the Knight-Hunters pursued us relentlessly for many years. We are a far cry from our original strength.”

Huh. Given that Senya had called herself a Knight-Hunter only a few minutes ago, Kol had to wonder whether or not she was one of those responsible for culling the Scions; again, not that she really cared, because it really didn’t seem much different to the Jedi and the Sith being at each other’s throats to her. But if Senya had been one of their hunters, she wasn’t exactly thrilled to be called in if this was some kind of circuitous revenge attack.

They were led into a wide chamber, clearly what had once been the workshop floor of the warehouse, and there were quite a few occupants paired off and sparring on and off across the space. They all slowed as they entered, lowering their weapons and turning to face them, their eerie silvery eyes glowing in the dim light of the makeshift arena. In the centre of the room, standing alone and weaponless, was the man who had called them and demanded their presence earlier- Heskal. The High Seeker, Senya had called him.

Kol’aya wondered if that meant once upon a time he had held the same rank and prestige as High Justice Vaylin. A culture of duality, Senya had said.

She shook her head. Didn’t matter, she didn’t care. She didn’t give a shit about Zakuulan culture, or the ruin these people had brought down upon their own heads.

The young woman who had guided them through the facility moved over to Heskal’s side, murmuring something quietly to him before moving to stand at his right shoulder. The silence was agonisingly uncomfortable, and the eyes of the Scions burned into her like ice; she felt like they were judging her, weighing up her every fault and flaw as if every secret part of her was visible to them.

She really didn’t like them already.

Heskal slowly moved his arms wide, in a gesture that was probably supposed to seem friendly, but was far too deliberate to be anything but calculating and unnerving. “Welcome, ladies,” he said. “Doctor Torr, Miss Che- and our dear Dowager Empress.”

Senya looked visibly pained at his. “Heskal,” she said, almost warningly, but it was too late.

“Hail to the Empress!” The Scions- as one- clapped a hand to their chests, clenched tight into a fist, and dropped to one knee. Only Heskal remained standing, an air of undeniable smugness radiating from him despite the fact that he had not moved. “Long live the Empress!”

“Heskal!” Senya hissed, her face pale. “Enough!”

At a gesture, the Scions slowly climbed back to their feet, and Heskal tucked his hands behind his back. “Forgive an old man his sentimentality,” Heskal said, his voice dripping with honey in a way that made Kol certain she was going to get hives just from listening to it. “It is hard to find things to find hope in, in these dark days.”

“I was _never_ the Empress,” she said, almost exasperated. “You of all people should know that!”

His eyes glittered like diamonds, cutting and clear. “You were married to our dear Emperor,” he said. “Just because you were uncomfortable with the public mantle does not change the facts, either way.”

Maybe she felt a little sorry for Senya, or maybe she was fed up with this Zakuulan posturing bullshit; maybe it was both. Either way, Kol stepped forward. “What the fuck do you want with us?” she asked flatly, her voice carrying boldly in the space. “We came running, just like you demanded, and now we’re here. So let’s get this over with, shall we?”

Heskal blinked slowly, and looked away from Senya; as his gaze fell upon her, Kol almost regretted her decision to say anything. There was something so cold and dismissive in his face, so unfriendly and, well... _alien_ , that it made her skin crawl.

“Why, Doctor Torr, so impatient,” he said, taking his first step towards her. It took everything in her not to immediately back up, her fight or flight instinct screaming at her as he slowly drew towards her. “And before introductions are even done-”

“Hi, I’m a doctor, you’re an asshole, I think that covers it. What do you want?”

To her surprise- and relief- he laughed, loudly; the other Scions joined him after a moment, and she felt more than ever like she’d walked into a trap; for fuck’s sake, they didn’t even sound like they knew how to laugh like normal people, like it was something they just pulled out on command. “Very well, doctor, I will accommodate your eagerness,” he said. “It is quite quite simple- one of our number is with child, and we do not have a healer amongst our number.”

Kol’aya did not relax, but she felt some of the suspicion grudgingly bleed away. “That’s it?” she asked dubiously. “You could’ve just said as much, I would’ve brought my medkit-”

“We have our own supplies that you are welcome to use,” Heskal said, his pale eyes watching her so closely that she felt her skin trying to physically escape from her body in revulsion.

“Okay.” She hesitated, and he did not move to usher her from the room, or even indicate where her help was needed. “So, like... should I just, go out in the hallway and yell?”

“You have some experience with obstetrics, don’t you doctor?” he said. “Strange for a woman whose specialisation is-”

“Do you have a point, and is the pregnant individual in immediate need of my aid?” she said, not interested in whatever rambling destination he was heading towards with his musings.

His pale eyes burned into her, like he was staring right down into the secret heart of her, observing all of the secret fears and desperate yearnings she kept buried in the dark. “We understand you were responsible for the safe delivery of the new Heir Apparent, Princess Anya of Zakuul, First of Her Name.”

Senya’s head turned ever so slightly, her gaze sliding to the side to look at her with renewed interest.

Kol’aya swallowed uncomfortably, but kept her chin held high. “I was one of the doctors on hand for Anya’s birth, yes,” she said.

Heskal tilted his head to the side. “Fascinating,” he said, his tone not giving anything away. “We are forever in your debt for the honour you do to the Eternal Throne.”

Now she was distinctly uncomfortable, because something about these questions felt like they were leading somewhere, and she wasn’t really keen on finding out where that somewhere was. “You are, uh... you are welcome,” she said carefully.

“Oramis,” he said, gesturing to the young woman who had led them through the facility to begin with, “be a dear and escort Doctor Torr to where she needs to go.”

The woman nodded and stepped forward, and after an uneasy moment of hesitation, Kol moved to follow her once more. As she left the room, she could hear the conversation moving on without her, with Evie the apparent source of their interest now.

“You are gifted, young one,” Heskal was saying, his voice following them down the hallway. “Tell me, why is it that you were never initiated? With the right training, you could have made a fine Knight.”

Evie’s response was the last thing she heard before the door closed behind them- a loud, clearly amused raspberry.

* * *

_Palace of the Eternal Dragon, Zakuul, Wild Space_

Arcann hadn’t slept.

He needed to sleep, desperately; he could barely concentrate on anything for more than a moment or two, and his skin felt hot and prickly, and far too tight for his body, as if he had a fever. His eyes kept watering, and his face was aching like it hadn’t in months. He had a colossal headache, and the thought of food to settle his queasy stomach just made it roil unhappily in further revulsion.

He couldn’t sleep, though, he couldn’t. If he slept, they could get him, if he slept, they could kill him. Father could find him, Father could kill him. He had to stay awake. Alert. He knew they were coming for him. They weren’t going to catch him unawares, oh no. Not him. No, not again.

These rebels, these terrorists, he was going to find them and the Alliance too, and he was going to destroy them one by one, and then his Father wouldn’t have any allies left, he wouldn’t have any options or any safe places to hide within strangers’ skulls, and he’d be gone for good, he’d be dead, and it would be safe.

Then, and only then, would it be safe to sleep.

And this Kol’aya, well, she was clearly going to be very grateful to him for rescuing her and saving her from the rebels, and he had decided he wasn’t impartial to that thought, since she was a handsome enough woman even if he wasn’t normally inclined to fuck people who had worked with his enemies. But that would make it all the sweeter, yes? Because it would mean he had won, that the Alliance was gone and his Father was dead. Yes, that would make it worth it. Excellent. He would be a hero. He would be alive and safe and a hero.

A good plan, a very good plan, good-

His holo chimed, and the sound startled him so much that he screamed, upending the caf table he was sitting at in a panic, sending the collection of items he’d accrued during his research flying across the room. The holo must have been knocked in the ensuing chaos, because as he stood there trembling, breath ragged in his lungs and his head swimming from the adrenalin, he heard a voice come from beneath the mess.

“Your Immortal Majesty? Are you there?”

The voice was one he would never forget, one that haunted his worst nightmares alongside his father’s voice. With a snarl of slightly unhinged rage, he picked up the upended table with his robotic arm and effortlessly threw it across the room and behind him, hearing it crunch as it hit the far wall and smashed into pieces. He kicked the scattered datapads and scraps of flimsi, until the holo appeared.

“Your Majesty? Can you hear me?”

“Tell me where you are so I can find you and kill you myself, Heskal,” he growled, scooping up the holo and bringing it up to face the figure of the man who had done so much to ruin his life. The High Seeker looked as he always did, his richly embroidered robes hanging perfectly and his grey hair cut elegantly; he did not look like a man who- to all intents and purposes- had been a fugitive of the law these last few years. He looked the same as he had the day that Arcann had thrown him out of The Spire, and sent out the order to destroy the Scions in their entirety.

Heskal just chuckled, and it made his skin crawl with fear and fury. “Now now, my dear boy,” he said, “let’s not be hasty before you’ve heard what I have to say.”

“Nothing you have to say could make me hold back from killing you. You are my father’s rabid lapdog, and I should have killed you myself when I had the chance.”

“Ah, but then you would not have had the opportunity I present to you today,” Heskal said, a smug look on his ugly face. Arcann hated him so much.

“I have far more important things to do than listen to you gloat,” Arcann said, moving to hang up.

But then Heskal said the last thing he expected to hear from him.

“I have with me now the key to the Alliance’s destruction, just waiting for you to take it,” he said.

He hesitated, his finger hovering over the button to disconnect the call. “And what would that be?”

Heskal’s smile broadened, but his eyes stayed cold. Always cold. “Why, the traitors who dealt you such a terrible blow yesterday,” he said. “Including your mother- and the Outlander.”

* * *

_Asylum, Zakuulan Imperial Territories, Unknown Regions_

Kol was sitting barefoot on her bed, flicking through a medical journal, when her holocomm pinged. She blinked, not having expected any calls, wondering whether it was just another spam holo; she set the stylus and the journal down on the pillow beside her, highlighting the sentence she was up to so as not to lose her place, and reached for the holo where it sat on the bedside.

“Kol’aya Torr,” she said.

To her immense frustration, the figure that appeared on the little holopad was not a friend, or a static advertisement; Heskal appeared as he had in the hall yesterday, with his arms tucked behind his back. “Good afternoon, Doctor Torr,” he said smoothly.

“How did you get my number?” she asked flatly, not even bothering with pleasantries.

“Still suspicious, I see. It’s nothing sinister, my dear, we were simply hoping to make use of your skills again- there’s been a slight accident during training, and poor Maral has suffered a lightsaber injury. Could we impose upon you once more?”

She fought the urge to roll her eyes. “Why do you train with live sabers, instead of training sticks?” she asked, climbing up off the bed and stretching.

“Training sabers are all well and good, but there comes a time when one must be accustomed to the dangers presented by a real weapon,” he said. “We were woefully unprepared for our brethren when they turned upon us at the Emperor’s orders. It behooves us to improve our skills in self defence if our Order is to survive.”

“I’m heartbroken for you all,” she said in a monotone, tugging on her boots and ferreting through the twisted sheets on the bed to find her coat. “Such a shame, all those mystical powers about reading the future and you still just sat there and got yourself killed by your buddies.”

“Your sympathies are unnecessary. Destiny marks a path for all of us.”

Well, that was both inane and stupid; she ignored it. “So, give me a sitrep, how bad is it? Do I have to run or can I wear my heels?”

“I’m sure Maral will understand that your commitment to your aesthetic comes before your commitment to saving lives.”

She gritted her teeth, despising him utterly yet knowing he was right. “I’ll be there as soon as possible,” she said stiffly, dumping a tote bag on the bed and digging out her portable medkit. “Just keep him calm and comfortable.”

Heskal nodded. “My thanks, doctor,” he said smoothly. Goddess, his voice was just so awful. She felt like she needed to take a shower just after talking to him. “Your work in the service of the Eternal Throne will not be forgotten.”

He disconnected before she could ask him about the odd wording, so she just tried to shrug it off. The guy was super weird regardless of what he said- she could’ve asked him about the weather and he still would’ve found a way to make that seem ominous and uncomfortable.

She ran into Xolani on her way through the corridors of the Gravestone, one of the few people on the ship she could actually tolerate for more than a single conversation; she was conversing with Kestra, the self-appointed leader of the refugee group they’d transported from Zakuul with them. “Are you going somewhere, doctor?” Xolani asked, a slight frown on her face as she spotted the medkit slung over her shoulder.

“Just got a call about an accident at the Scions’ facility,” she said. “Shouldn’t take too long.”

“Do you want someone to go with you?”

She shook her head. “I’ll be fine,” she said, patting the blaster strapped to her hip.

Xolani nodded, apparently considering the matter closed. “Lord Amariha and Captain Vortena believe repairs will be completed in the next three hours,” she said. “Let us know if you’re going to be longer than that.”

Kol sketched a lazy salute as she kept walking. “Can do,” she called back over her shoulder.

The cargo bay was open out onto the dock, and the crew working for Captain Vortena were moving back and forth yelling obscenities with affection as they moved the last few battery cells through for Lord Amariha’s repairs. One or two of them watched her as she left, but she hadn’t really had time to get to know any of them at all; she wasn’t a social creature by both preference and habit.

She found her way through the streets of Asylum once more without any difficulty, left alone by the criminal types who allegedly ran the place. Either the calibre of the underbelly had been vastly exaggerated, or she exuded enough of a ‘ _fuck off_ ’ aura that nobody thought it worth the risk to jump her. She’d had lots of practice with that, after all.

As before, there were no guards posted at the Scions’ headquarters, and there was a long delay after she’d pressed the guest panel before anyone answered. She was beginning to wonder if maybe it’d short circuited, and they couldn’t hear her announcing her presence, when it finally crackled to life.

“Speak,” came Heskal’s voice curtly, the word almost snarled.

Taken aback, Kol blinked at the empty screen. “Uh, yeah, do you want me to look at Maral or not? Because if that’s your attitude, you can fuck right off and I can go back to the ship-”

There was a beep and the door slid open, and Heskal did not answer her.

“Fucking asshole,” she muttered, hefting her bag onto her shoulder and crossing the threshold. The door slid closed again so quickly that it bumped her lekku, and she grunted in annoyance, rubbing the back of the curved appendages to soothe the faint sting.

There was no one in the hallway to greet her, and she scowled into the silence. “Hello?” she called, starting down towards the first chamber. “Hey, I’m here, anyone? Hello?”

The first chamber was empty, and for the first time she began to ask herself whether the unnerving crawling sensation was her discomfort at having to deal with Heskal again, or whether her sixth sense was trying to tell her something. In the next hallway, there were several tapestries askew, and the one at the end of the hallway had a very obvious burn mark scorched through the centre of it.

... how bad had this training accident been?

“Hello?” she shouted. There was still no answer, and her self-preservation began to shout at her to get out. “Hello, anyone?” She stepped into the main chamber, the one she’d seen earlier being used as an actual training chamber- and straight into a massacre.

There were bodies lying about everywhere, and burn marks along the walls and floors. She stood stunned for a moment, trying to take in the immensity of what she was seeing.

Her pocket pinged loudly, and she nearly jumped out of her skin; she licked dry lips when she realised it was only her holo, and pulled it from her coat with shaking hands.

“Doc- Torr?” The reception was terrible, the signal too poor to even maintain the holo image; it was restricted to voice only, and even that was barely legible. “Are... there?”

“I’m here,” she said, stepping into the chamber and over to the first body. The young man was lying on his back, so she didn’t need to check closely to see that he was definitely dead, a ruthless gash running from the crook of his neck to the centre of his sternum. “Something bad has happened at the Scions’ place.”

“... Scions... traitor, she... here.” She couldn’t even tell who was on the other end of the call, the connection too poor for her to make anything more than a female voice. “-attack... can’t risk...”

The line went dead.

She shook it once or twice and tried to reconnect, but the holo just buzzed without luck. As she stowed it in her pocket, a ragged moan came from behind her, and she jerked around.

In the centre of the chamber, someone moved.

Her training kicked into action and she ran over to the body, skidding to her knees beside it as she turned it over and found Heskal in her lap, his breathing ragged and his eyes closed. There were no discernible wounds upon him like the other body, but his vitals were all over the place as she ran her medscanner over him. “Heskal?” she said, shining her pen light into his eyes to check for burst blood vessels. “Heskal, can you hear me?”

“I’m afraid he isn’t in a position to talk right now,” came a voice behind her.

It was a voice she’d heard many times over the last five years- sort of impossible not to hear it, after all. She twisted slowly, glancing carefully over her shoulder.

“Hello, Doctor Torr,” said Emperor Arcann Tirall, from where he stood in the doorway behind her. “It was so good of you to answer my summons so promptly.”


	5. Chapter 5

She looked good on her knees.

Arcann strolled casually into the chamber, his eyes never leaving her as he moved; Doctor Torr, in turn, stared back at him, and the boldness of her gaze thrilled him. Almost everyone lowered their gaze in his presence, out of respect and fear, but she stared openly, a challenge in her eyes. Not quite hostile, but definitely not friendly.

That she thought herself on equal enough footing to him to look him in the eye was stunning, and he had to fight down the urge to grin wildly beneath his mask.

She was just as she had looked in the various hololectures he’d watched, just without the sleek white medical coat of her profession. In its’ place, she wore a black leather coat that hung down farther than her skirt, which was almost scandalously short- and kneeling, it was pushed up higher again, her muscular, tattooed thighs almost brazenly on display. Gods, he wondered how far up the tattoos went, if he could follow them like a treasure map. She would be so grateful for his rescue, so grateful.

He’d find out soon enough.

“My eyes are up here,” she said suddenly, her voice breaking through the silence of the room.

He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“My eyes,” she said, gesturing to her face. “They ain’t moved. You aren’t gonna find them down by my skirt.”

She... she was telling him off? What? “I don’t think you understand the perilous nature of your situation, Doctor Torr,” he started to say- and it was absolutely the wrong thing to say.

Her guarded expression morphed into one of utter animalistic rage, and she surged to her feet, hand already moving to the hip where her gun rested. He was far faster, of course, and it was hardly a taxing use of his powers to raise his hand and extend a shield just as she fired; the blaster bolt impacted dully with the transparent dome around him, directly at head height. He looked past his outstretched hand, to where Doctor Torr stood with the blaster still extended in his direction. “Do not do that again,” he said.

“Don’t threaten me with rape, and I won’t be inclined to shoot you, you fucking asshole,” she said, her voice shaking with rage.

He- _what?_ She thought _what?_ “I didn’t threaten you with _rape_ ,” he said incredulously.

“Oh, spare me your pitiful whining cries of innocence, I know what I heard.”

He started to lower his hand. “I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot-”

She shot him again.

He jerked his hand back into position, the shield flicking back into place just in time for the bolt to glance off, far too close to his face. “I am here to _rescue_ you, you insufferable woman!” he roared.

She did not waver for a moment, the gun still aimed directly at him. “What part of this situation seems to require a rescue, jackass?” she spat. “Because right now the only problem in this situation is _you_.”

This wasn’t going anything like how he’d planned in his head. “Please, Doctor Torr,” he said, trying not to grit his teeth beneath his mask, “I truly mean you no harm. I simply wish to talk with you.”

“You’re making a lot of sounds, but I haven’t heard anything worth listening to so far,” she said.

He raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “You have my word that no harm will come to you,” he said, elongating each word as if he was trying to convey a different language to her. Which, to be fair, it almost seemed like he was. “I simply wish to talk.”

For an agonised moment, she didn’t move, and he thought she was about to shoot him again; not that he couldn’t have stopped the strike yet again if she did, but it was still immensely frustrating. Finally she lowered the gun, not to the point where she holstered it again, but at least so that it was not pointed directly at his face. That was something. “Talk,” she said bluntly.

He took a deep breath. “Thank you,” he said. A somewhat bumpy start, but it was better than nothing. “I am here to rescue you.”

She was silent for a moment, as if absorbing his statement. “So you said,” she said finally. “What in the red fucking sands of Ryloth makes you think I’m looking for a hero to swoop in and save me?”

“I’ve seen the footage from Zakuul, Doctor Torr,” he said. “May I call you Kol’aya?”

“No, you may not.”

“Very well,” he said, nodding in acknowledgement. “I’ve seen the footage of Darth Nox’s escape, and the brutal treatment you received at the hands of the Alliance terrorists. I was devastated to see such a brilliant, peerless woman treated with such violent disdain-”

“Keep the flowery language to yourself, buddy,” she said.

“I saw you kept in handcuffs by your so called collaborators,” he said, getting right to the matter at hand. “An ugly necessity for the charade of infiltrating the building to begin with, perhaps- but afterwards? When the escape was already underway?” He spread his hands wide, taking the risk of taking another step forward; she didn’t skitter backwards and she didn’t threaten to shoot him, so he took that as a good sign. “The cruelty of it, the sheer gall of them- to use you for their own gain, and treat you so poorly in return-”

“You aren’t exactly known for your benevolent altruism, either.”

He bit his tongue to stop himself from snapping at her to stop interrupting him. She was frightened, and she was violent; he had to approach her carefully, gently. Like a hunter sitting silently in a field, waiting for the prey to grow accustomed to his presence and approach of its’ own accord, he had to be patient with her. “I do not condone slavery,” he started to say, and she rolled her eyes.

“Good for you, do you want a medal? A cookie?”

He stepped closer again, and she tensed, her fingers tightening on the blaster even if she did not lift it to intercept him. “Zakuul must have a firm hand to keep the warring savagery of the Republic and the Empire to a minimum,” he said. “You know as well as I that- left to their own devices- they will fall upon one another again with rabid intent, and it will not be the men and women in the ivory citadels who suffer. It will be the common folk, the people you have always sought to aid in your medical services, who will bear the brunt of their wars.”

She hesitated for the first time, as if she was struggling to argue with his logic. Excellent.

“I have given the galaxy peace, and in return, these Alliance terrorists have besmirched your good name and your dignity,” he said.

Doctor Torr lifted her head, eyes glinting. “I am not a passive participant in this arrangement, like you seem to think I am,” she said stiffly.

He raised his one visible eyebrow. “And yet they have you handcuffed at every single turn, and send you on errands like a first year medical intern- not a celebrated surgeon who is a two-time recipient of the Bao-Dur Science Prize for her work in the field of osseoprothetic integration, or the honoured beneficiary of the Raza Foundation Galactic Humanitarian Award for her tireless efforts to bring medical aid to the downtrodden and the forgotten.”

She looked visibly stunned, her eyes wide and her lip parted ever so slightly as if she’d almost gasped and caught herself at the last moment. He’d read- during his extensive readings of the twi’lek people- that the lekku could often be looked to for non-verbal clues; Doctor Torr was standing at an angle to him, not quite side-on, but it was enough to see that the one lekku visible to him was curling up ever so slightly at the end.

Some of his words were hitting where he needed them to.

“So you read up on me beforehand,” she said, her voice cracking. “So what?”

“It means, Doctor Torr, that I respect you where they do not,” he said, and when she started to roll her eyes, he held up a hand. “Ah, it is not what you think. I approached you because you were a woman I greatly admired, both for your intelligence and your commitment to helping others. I cannot say the same for the individuals you travel with- and it made me wonder exactly why you were travelling with them in the first place.”

“For the _money_ , asshole.”

He’d slowly circled around her, prowling around the diameter of the room while she spun in place to keep pace with him. She never put away the blaster, but she kept it down by her thigh instead of pointed at his face. He’d count that as a point in his favour. “We both know it is not money that drives you, Doctor Torr,” he said. “If it was, you would not have been in a position where the offers of the Alliance could tempt you in the first place.”

She quite visibly gritted her teeth, her jaw clenching. He liked the way her skin was not uniformly yellow- in some places, particularly in the heavy folds of her lekku or the crook of her neck, it darkened to a greenish-yellow, not quite mottled but still enchanting to look upon. He wondered how extensive the colour variations were across her body, what other secrets she was hiding beneath the long coat.

“Okay, one,” she said, forcing the words out as if it was physically costing her to speak them aloud, “I’ll concede that, that’s a good point.”

He grinned slowly.

“And two,” she said, her voice cracking a little again, slightly high-pitched, “if you don’t stop looking at me like that, I’m going to empty this goddamn blaster into your fucking face again.”

He came to a stop, standing just in front of the doorway again from where they had first entered. “Looking at you like what, Doctor Torr?”

He saw her swallow, and he couldn’t tell if it was fear or arousal. “You are looking at me in a distinctly sexual manner, your Majesty, and your attentions are neither warranted nor welcome.”

“Your honesty is refreshing, doctor.”

“Well then, let me _honestly_ say that I don’t give a shit how refreshing you find me,” she said, her voice cracking once more; she ducked her head slightly, rubbing at her face as if she was wiping away tears. She sniffed loudly as she raised her chin again, and if it had been tears, there was no sign of them now. “Tell me what you want.”

“I already told you- I wanted-”

“To talk, yeah yeah, bullshit,” she said. “You want something from me.”

He couldn’t help himself. “I could think of many things I want from you, doctor,” he started to say.

She shot him for a third time.

This one took him by surprise, and it actually glanced off the metal plating of his shoulder as he struggled to get his shield up in time. He stared for a moment at the burning hole in the wall behind him, before looking back to where her shaking hand was still pointing the blaster in his direction.

“The next one is going through your dick,” she snarled. “You think you’re the first shitty little human boy getting his kicks out of fucking with my head?

He gaped at her, his brain latching on to the one part of the statement he could actually process. “ _Boy?_ ” he said incredulously.

“You’re a brat, and a spoiled one at that, and you’re used to everyone falling onto your dick as soon as you look at them,” she said. “I know your type, and you don’t have anything to say that could ever interest me.”

Well. So much for his grand plans for Doctor Torr.

He clasped his hands behind his back, the better to illustrate that he found her to be such an insignificant threat that he would not bother to keep his hands free to block any further blaster bolts. “Very well,” he said coldly. “I had assumed that you were being held by the Alliance against your will, and would appreciate the opportunity to enact revenge upon them.”

“You assumed _wrong_ ,” she said icily, and it made him feel about two inches tall.

He gritted his teeth. “And tell me, doctor- does it sit well with you?” At the look of confused hesitation in her eyes, he clarified. “Freeing a World-Eater, I mean. For a woman so committed to the preservation of life, your choice to aid that monster is an odd one.”

She stared at him, hard, but then her eyes dropped to the floor. Hah! Another point in his favour. “I’m not going to pretend I understand how that Force shit works,” she started to say, but now it was his turn to cut her off.

“And yet, your hesitation suggests that you know it to be the wrong decision,” he said, pressing the point. “They’ve told you that Nox houses the spirit of your sith emperor, yes?”

“He’s not my emperor,” she snarled, but her eyes betrayed her doubts.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, glad that the mask hid his smirk. “Did you never question why I kept Nox locked away as I did, frozen and safe, instead of imprisoning her in a more conventional manner?”

“I don’t happen to really understand the megalomaniacal mindset all that well, no,” she said sarcastically. “I’m not in the habit of keeping living, breathing people as decorations.”

He paced slowly back and forth before the door, reluctant to move closer while she was still in such a trigger-happy mood. “That monster lives, hidden with one of his loyal sith servants,” he said, watching the fractures begin to form in her confidence, watching the doubt blossom within her. “He will rise again, now that he is free, and he will kill _billions_. He will settle for nothing less than the destruction of entire worlds.”

She didn’t say anything, so he continued.

“Have you seen a world consumed, doctor?” he said, delighting in the way she flinched. “Have you seen the way it transcends death, a waking horror that time itself cannot chip away at?”

She lifted her chin. “I have not,” she said honestly.

“Hmm. I have.” He stepped closer, and she didn’t back away. “I have walked the surface of a planet so wrecked and ruined by his hunger that not even the air stirs. There is no death, no decay, because there is nothing of anything- he has consumed it, down to the very essence of life, he has taken it away. There is nothing but an absence that you feel inside of you, aching and bleeding with the wrongness of it all.”

“Stop it,” she whispered.

“Where once there was life, now there is nothing-”

“Stop it,” she repeated, louder this time.

“Where children played and families grew, now there is not even bones to grieve over-”

“I said _stop!_ ”

“Can you live with yourself, doctor? Knowing that you gave that monster a second chance? Knowing that you gave him the opportunity to destroy the lives of billions of people, regardless of age or creed or sex?”

She let out a sound that seemed almost like a cry, something devastated and angry, and her hand with the blaster hung loosely at her side, as if the gun was forgotten. “What do you _want?_ ” she asked, her voice angry and miserable, wrapped in loathing and fear.

It was a feeling he could well sympathise with- he felt it quite regularly when dealing with the remnants of his father.

“I want to contain the threat my father poses, before he can wreak any more damage in the galaxy,” he said. “To that end, I must make sure that Nox is taken back into custody. I cannot allow her to roam free with my father’s spirit within her.”

She looked hesitant, like the doubts he was planting were beginning to take hold at last. Not that he was lying to her, per se, but he certainly wasn’t fool enough to offer her the whole truth. “Nox does not seem to be as excited about her new arrangement as you seem to think she is,” she said dubiously.

He shrugged. “I doubt she would be honest about her intentions- she is a Sith, after all,” he said. “Tell me- have you seen her express any doubts as to whether or not she can control the spirit within her?” Her gaze flicked away almost guiltily, and he fought the urge to laugh. “A yes, then. She cannot even assure you that she has the creature safely contained. What’s to say he won’t simply seize control while she sleeps, with no-one the wiser?”

“What do you want with me, then?” she said, something angry creeping back into her tone. “Why go to all this trouble, why murder the Scions-”

He lifted a hand to stop her before she got too far ahead of herself. “I did not kill the Scions,” he said, unable to stop himself from smirking.

She gestured angrily to the bodies lying strewn about. “You seem to be under the impression that I’m a fucking idiot-”

“The Scions turned on one another when it was discovered the Heskal had contacted me,” he said loudly, speaking over the top of her protests. “Apparently there was some... dissent, shall we say, as to whether or not Heskal’s choices represented a true interpretation of their visions.”

“So you killed him,” she said.

“Oh yes. But not for that.” He didn’t care if she judged him for the admission. “I would have killed him just for the cruelty he inflicted upon me as a child- this was just a long overdue reckoning.”

For the barest fraction of a second, something softened in her expression- something sad and pitying and frightened that struck a chord deep within him. But then it was gone, just as quickly as it had appeared, and her eyes were hard again. “A lot of us get hurt as children,” she said flatly. “Most of us don’t resort to mass murder and tyrannical autocracy as a means of coping.”

The barb stung more than it had a right to. “Do not speak of what you do not understand,” he snarled.

Doctor Torr straightened her shoulders. “Never did like being told what to do by human men,” she said. She lifted the gun again, but did not shoot immediately. “I haven’t heard a good enough reason yet not to keep shooting until I can see daylight through the other side of your skull.”

“Help me to capture Nox,” he said, spitting the words out from between gritted teeth. “Help me to right this wrong, Doctor Torr. If she escapes with my father’s evil within her...” He spread his hands wide, a gesture of hopelessness. “Only war and devastation will follow in his wake.”

She stared at him, her dark eyes narrowed; neither of them moved, he with his arms spread almost in supplication, and she with her arm extended with the gun aimed unwaveringly at his face. It was almost childish of her, to imagine that she could injure him. He had easily deflected her first few strikes with no more difficulty than he might swat at a fly, and yet she continued to threaten him as if she stood a chance? Her persistence, if nothing else, was admirable, and he could not recall the last time that anyone had ever had the gall to defy him so blatantly.

Perhaps Doctor Torr was not quite the weak link he had assumed her to be.

But then, she surprised him.

She lowered the gun.

“Suppose I happen to agree with you on principle,” she said, and she sounded angry to even be conceding that much. “Suppose I’m not really happy with the idea that people are gonna get hurt on account of me- I still don’t see what you’re expecting me to do about this mess.”

He fought the urge to punch the air in childish triumph. Instead he tucked his hands behind his back, so that she couldn’t see him fidgeting. “To start with, you can give me information about the terrorist cell you travel with,” he said.

“There are _children_ on that ship,” she said bluntly, gesturing to the bodies around them, “and this doesn’t really inspire me towards trusting that you’re gonna do right by any of them.”

He held up one hand, and placed the other over his chest. “You have my word that no harm will come to the innocents onboard,” he said.

She looked skeptically at the bodies and then back at him.

“Does my word mean so little to you?”

“I really don’t have a point of reference other than the pile of dead bodies around me, so not really, no.”

He hadn’t really anticipated this conversation going on for so long- he’d assumed that she would have capitulated much faster, either out of fear or out of an eager desire to ingratiate herself with a more powerful ally. He had never encountered someone who had so little sense of self preservation that they would talk back to him so boldly, as if they were his equal and their opinion demanded his attention. It was frustrating, yes, but it was thrilling as well. He _liked_ this back and forth between them, this cutting tête-à-tête, and found the challenge of trying to win her over to his corner to be far more difficult than most of the battles he had fought during the early days of Zakuul’s conquest of the galaxy.

It was... surprisingly electrifying.

“I have come here alone, without the support of my armies, because my intent is not to harm,” he said. “I reached out to you, Doctor Torr, because I knew out of any onboard that you would be the most reasonable when faced with the grim realities of Nox’s escape.” He stretched out a hand towards her. “I have put myself at your mercy, doctor, because out of everyone caught up in this terrible endeavour, I know I can trust you to do the right thing.”

She stared at him, and he could almost see the fractures forming in her resolve. With a little pressure, she would crack and crumble entirely.

So he pushed.

“Help me protect not just the children on board that vessel, but the children of Zakuul, and of Asylum, and of every planet and every moon and every station,” he said, hand outstretched as if he was imploring her to take it. “Because the creature Nox is carrying within her will not spare any of them.”

Doctor Torr looked down at the gun in her hand, then back to him, and sighed. She holstered the blaster, crossing her arms almost defensively. “You can cut the moralistic bullshit,” she said. “We both know you don’t-”

The ground rumbled ominously, and a half second later an explosion sounded in the distance. Doctor Torr jerked around in alarm at the same time as him.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know-”

“You just said you came alone, and now there’s things exploding-”

“This is a mining facility! Mining volatile gases! It could be-” He blinked as he looked at the alerts flashing on his commlink. “Well, alright, maybe it’s not that.”

_Damnit, Vaylin._

“You fucking _liar!_ ” Doctor Torr rounded on him, eyes flashing dangerously as she stabbed a finger in his direction. “All that fucking bullshit about wanting to save people-”

There was another explosion, and he gritted his teeth as he fought to keep his balance, this one apparently much closer to their location than the last strike. He’d given Vaylin explicit instructions to keep the fleet out of visual range until he called them in- something must have gone wrong, because she wouldn’t have been so foolish as to defy him so blatantly...

... would she?

“You are far more foolish than I took you for if you thought for a moment that I meant any of that!” he shouted back at her. “I need to stop Nox and my father, and I will do anything- _anything_ \- to stop them, so if that means the people travelling with her need to die-”

“You fucking _asshole!_ ”

“What, you didn’t think your precious Alliance didn’t plan for exactly this eventuality?” he snarled. “Why do you think they travel with children in the first place, hmm? They’re using children as a human shield, and yet _I’m_ the barbaric one?”

There came a third explosion, this one close enough that a shower of grit and dust came raining down from the ceiling, little chips of mortar clattering against the tiled floor. And now, thanks to Vaylin’s impatience, he was going to be forced to do the one thing he hadn’t wanted to do.

He reached for his lightsaber, and Doctor Torr’s eyes widened.

“I’m sorry, it’s-”

He started to say ‘ _it’s nothing personal_ ’, but as he did, alarm bells began to ring in his head. As if in slow motion, he turned and looked towards the far wall, and switched the visual sensors in his mask to heat tracking- just in time to see a flaming shuttle about to slam into the building.

Instinct took over- he was standing in the doorway to the hallway, and would be relatively protected from the impact if he took a step or two back, but Doctor Torr was standing right in the centre of the room, to keep as much distance between them as possible. She was going to be killed in seconds, which theoretically was exactly what he’d been planning for and saved him the trouble of doing it himself.

The far wall imploded, as the shuttle began to crash through.

He reached out, reaching inwards with his power while his arm stretched out, and the Force swirled around Doctor Torr and wrenched her backwards. The shuttle crashed into the chamber, a torrent of fire and jagged metal and debris as the ceiling came crashing down after it, and Doctor Torr flew ahead of it, careening backwards through the air until she smashed into his waiting arms. He grabbed at her, tucking her against his chest as he turned and threw up a shield across the doorway, flinching at the wild cacophony of noise as his audio sensors tried to process the screaming metal and belching explosions and cracking concrete. The whole building shook and shuddered like they were in the midst of a groundquake, and he couldn’t see anything past the billowing clouds of dust that filled the air.

Eventually, the noise began to settle, and the worst of the rumbling stopped; coughing and blinking, he froze with the dawning realisation that the doctor was clutched tight in his arms. She stirred, not quite pulling away from him, but certainly pulling back enough so that she could look him in the eye; the stunned expression on her face was one he was certain mirrored his own, because here she was, alive and safe with her arms around his neck and his arms around her waist because he’d just pulled her out of the path of a runaway shuttle.

The dust was settling on her skin like powder, and he had the most bizarre urge to reach up and brush it away.

“You- why?” she asked incredulously, when she finally found her tongue.

“What?”

“You just saved my _life_ ,” she said, like she’d never said anything so absurd in her life. “You just- you were going to kill me, and then- _why?_ ”

His heart was pounding wildly in his ears, the adrenalin from the near death experience surging in his blood; he shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, but he was having trouble concentrating. “Why what?”

“You could’ve just let it kill me, why did you save me?”

Her features began to blur in his vision, and his visual sensors in his mask tried to compensate without success; the sounds of distant explosions sounded muted, almost fuzzy. “I don’t... know,” he managed to say, but his tongue felt cumbersome and thick in his mouth. “What...?”

He fell to one knee, unable to keep himself upright any longer; it put him at face height with her belly and lower, and he had a fierce yearning to just plant himself forward and fall asleep with his face buried there.

“Consider this a life for a life,” she said, her voice almost distant now. “You saved me, so- so I won’t kill you, either.”

He wanted to sleep so badly. “What have you done to me?” he forced out, his voice hoarse.

His gaze was drawn to her left hand, the one that hadn’t been holding the blaster during their confrontation. There was something loosely clasped between her fingers, something thin and cylindrical, something that he had completely overlooked until now.

A now empty stim injector casing.

With immense difficulty, he dragged his eyes up to her face; he felt warm, and fuzzy, and the noises of the attack upon Asylum sounded like they were muffled through a thousand pillows. But her face was clear as he stared at her, and the anguish in her eyes as she looked down at him was burned into his brain.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Huh. She’d actually outwitted him.

As he struggled to hold onto consciousness, she stepped backwards almost skittishly as he slumped down onto the floor. The stim casing fell from her hand, and he could almost believe that she meant it when she apologised to him. “I can’t let you do this,” she said.

She looked good standing over him.

He blacked out.

* * *

Kol’aya wrenched open the side door to the warehouse, coughing as she tried to pull the collar of her jacket up to cover her mouth from the smoke and the dust. There were sirens wailing in the distance, and an automated voice instructing citizens to remain calm, and the distant sounds of wild blaster fire. Above her, in the hazy blue sky, the grid-like formation of the Eternal Fleet was in place, like a net slowly closing around them; even as she watched, a small craft tried to make a break for it, and only made it a few dozen feet into the air before it all but imploded, utterly demolished by the rain of fire that fell down upon it from above.

She fumbled for the wall behind her, her knees threatening to give out beneath her in absolute terror. It was hard to breathe, because the panic gripped her lungs like iron bars while the smoke burned them from within, and it was only because of the concrete at her back that she didn’t just slither onto the floor in a gibbering mess.

_Fuck_. She was such a fucking idiot, walking into such an obvious trap like that.

She closed her eyes and tipped her head back against the wall, covering her face with her hands as she struggled not to vomit or burst into tears. She’d just come so close to dying, and she’d accepted the fact that she hated that egomaniacal asshole as she waited for her stalling tactics to finally wear thin, but then...

... he’d _saved_ her.

Why the fuck had he done that? The only other person in her entire life who had ever cared enough to endanger themselves and save her was Ysaine, and trying to compare the woman who had shaped her entire life with that tyrannical bullshit artist was just... just...

What the fuck was he thinking? She’d shot him three times! Granted, her shooting him had really only seemed like a time-waster, given how little it seemed to affect him, but still! Was he really that stupid?

... well, he’d bought into her bullshit stalling tactics for nearly half an hour, that had to count as points against him. “Goddamn master tactician, my ass,” she muttered, coughing again and leaning over to spit a mouthful of dust onto the ground beside her. Wiping her mouth with the back of her sleeve, she pushed herself up on shaking legs, cringing when her gaze unwittingly drifted skyward and took in the suffocating mass of the Eternal Fleet.

Taking a deep breath, she started hobbling down the street- apparently she’d sprained her ankle when she’d gone flying through the air and crashed into a goddamn Emperor at high speed?- trying to keep out of sight of any overhead sensors by ducking from one overhang to the next.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why the fuck had he saved her? Why would he do that? What a stupid fucking idiot, what, did he think she was gonna just swoon into his fucking arms out of gratitude? Was this just another one of his goddamn mind games? She should’ve just shot him the moment he passed out, she should’ve given him a more potent dose, she should’ve- shit, she’d left him in a burning, collapsing building.

She staggered to a halt, half turning back down the street to where the warehouse sat burning behind her, a gaping hole in the roof. Did his mask filter smoke or toxins? He’d die of smoke inhalation painfully fast if it didn’t. A life for a life, she’d said, convincing herself not to kill him, but did it really count if she’d kept him alive only for him to die slowly and painfully from suffocation, or burning to death?

“ _Fuck_ ,” she hissed, starting to hobble back in the direction of the warehouse.

Her holocomm rang.

Cursing a blue streak in the air, she pulled it from her pocket and put her free hand against the wall for balance, her breath wheezing in her chest. Her fingers were shaking as she answered, and the pale blue figure of Lord Beniko appeared before her.

She looked her over quickly. “You look like hell,” she said briskly.

Kol grimaced. “Good to see you too,” she said.

“We’ve been trying to get hold of you for the past half hour- Heskal turned on the rest of the Scions and summoned Arcann to Asylum. Where have you been?”

Kol closed her eyes, rubbing her face wearily. “In the illustrious company of our esteemed Emperor,” she said flatly.

Lord Beniko didn’t even blink. “I’ll assume that’s a joke, given that you’re still alive,” she said coldly. “We need you to do something.”

She fought the urge to laugh hysterically. “Sure, whatever, it’s one of those days, so why not?”

“Your flippancy is not appreciated, Doctor. We are currently pinned down on the dock by High Justice Vaylin and several Exarchs, but the port authority overrides have got the Gravestone on lockdown, and we can’t escape until we-”

A vile epithet was snarled in Huttese in the background, cutting her off, and for a moment hearing a slur in a language that had caused her so much pain made Kol’aya freeze. “I can intercept the commands to the skytroopers, or I can intercept the lockdown on the Gravestone,” came a voice that she recognised as Lord Amariha. The little Sith woman had been shy and sweet when they’d been introduced, but that voice- the anger and the echo of power in it- made her skin crawl to hear it. “I can’t do both.”

“And we are grateful that you are able to do that much,” Lana said, sounding exasperated as she addressed someone behind her. “Please just focus.”

“Don’t go using that tone with her, blondie,” another voice drawled.

“Oh, for- Captain Revel, I have nothing but the highest respect for your wife, and this is hardly the time to take umbrage with tone!”

“What do you _want_ , Beniko?” Kol’aya said, half shouting to get her attention.

Lana growled in frustration as she turned back to her. “You are the only one not trapped on the Gravestone,” she said. “If we try to leave now, the maglocks will tear the hull open like wet flimsi- we need you to get to the control spar and override the port authority.”

She wanted to bang her head against the wall beside her. “I am _not_ a slicer-”

“Captain Vortena is confident that he’ll be able to walk you through the process,” she said. “I’m sending you coordinates now, you’ll have to hurry. We can only hold off Vaylin for so long, and Force only knows where Arcann is.”

So it was gonna be like that, huh? “If we’re lucky, maybe he’s unconscious in a burning building,” she said.

“He’s more than likely directing the attack from his flagship, but stay on your guard. May the Force ever serve you- and please, doctor, hurry.”

Lana disconnected the call, and Kol’aya only just stopped herself from smashing the holocomm into the concrete. “Fucking Sith,” she snarled, stuffing it back in her pocket again with far more force than was necessary. _There are children on that ship_ , she reminded herself, as she set off down the alleyway as fast as her ankle could manage.

_They’re using children as a human shield, and yet I’m the barbaric one?_

His voice still echoed in her head, and she tried to shut it out.

Her blaster got far more of a work-out than she’d been hoping for when she’d left the Gravestone earlier- there were plenty of lowlifes taking advantage of the confusion and the panic to benefit themselves, and more than one of the idiots she crossed paths with decided that a lone twi’lek woman was a pretty good prize to claim while no one was around to stop them. Unfortunately for them, she’d been fighting off lecherous thugs since she was a little girl- she’d broken her first nose when she was six, and earned her first at age four. There was a reason she wore her sharpest rings when she went out alone, and stiletto boots with a heel sharpened to draw blood. There was a reason she had trained relentlessly to be a crackshot with a blaster, even if she deplored having to carry one.

There was a reason she was well-practiced in the art of palming dangerous stims up her sleeve, all the better to drug any attacker who got too close for her more conventional weapons to do any good.

She raced through the port town, ruthlessly glad that she hadn’t neglected her fitness these last few years on Rishi, and had kept up with her endurance running. Smoke filled the air as she ran, and she tried her best to keep her mouth covered until she could get indoors to where the filters were hopefully still operational. Goddess preserve, at this rate the gravitational buoys that kept the station at a safe orbit in the planet’s atmosphere were going to fail, and they would all sink into the crushing depths of the gas giant below.

A horrifying thought- did that make her afraid of heights, or afraid of depths? Either way, a sensible fear to have.

She reached the central port authority, finding the lobby blessedly abandoned- the last thing she’d wanted to do was have some kind of confrontation with a poor receptionist who wanted nothing to do with this disaster. She vaulted the desk with ease and skidded up to the first console she could find, fumbling for her holocomm as she did so.

“I’m here, I’m at the office,” she said, scarcely waiting for the call to connect.

The hologram resolved to be the Zakuulan rebel, Captain Vortena, and he looked about as stressed as she felt. “Okay, so, you’re gonna want the main console, it’s probably about the size of speeder or bigger-”

“Wait, wait, what?” She stepped back and looked around at the lobby. “I’m just in the front of the office, I have to use a particular console?”

“Uh, yeah? You know, like in a spaceport, you have to go to the flight control tower, not just the damn check in?”

Kol made a frustrated noise, which was better than yelling obscenities at Captain Vortena. “Give me five minutes,” she said irritably. “Where is this fucking master console?”

“At the top of the control spar- flight control for the port, you know, they gotta-”

“They gotta see everything, yeah, I get it.” She straightened and scanned the room for an elevator, trying to ignore the wailing alarms that were making her head throb. “Call you when I get there.” She raced over to the lift doors, snarling wordlessly at it when it refused to open at her touch. “Access card? Who the fuck needs an access card in an emergency, that’s just terrible occ-health and safety planning!” She ran back to the desk for the second time, ripping open drawers and cupboards until she finally found what she assumed to be a spare card.

She laughed a little hysterically when it pinged cheerfully, stumbling into the lift and spamming the button for the top floor. The pressure peaked slightly, and she winced, putting a hand up to her ear cones. She had a stitch burning in her side, and she pressed hard on the spot between her ribs, trying to massage it away. This was fine, it wasn’t too small in here, there was plenty of room, and the air was flowing, so it wasn’t some kind of death-trap hotbox, it was fine-

The tower shuddered violently, and the lift dropped a few inches instead of rising, a screech of metal ringing through into the cabin. She screamed, clutching at the walls in a blind panic, but after a moment the lift righted itself and continued upwards; the noise she let out probably couldn’t even pass for laughter anymore, and was just an expression of outright hysteria, but she lied and told herself she was laughing at the absurdity of it all.

She was gonna die in a fucking radio tower trying to save a possessed Sith lord from an army of robots. Honestly, she hadn’t seen that one coming.

After what felt like a thousand years, the doors finally ground open with a protesting whine, a few sparks spilling across the floor as the metal rubbed together forcefully; she threw herself through the gap the moment she was able to, stumbling onto one knee as she rushed to get as far away as the tiny cage of death as was mortally possible. The platform she’d exited out onto was unpleasantly high, and roughly diamond shaped with viewing decks facing in all four directions, the better to give a full aerial view of the port.

In the continuing theme of bad health and safety designs, the walkways were completely open to the elements, with only a minimal safety railing in place to stop people from plummeting to their deaths hundreds of metres below. She very pointedly did not look down; her nerves were already run ragged from the trip in the elevator, she really didn’t need to go adding any queasiness at her height above the ground.

Taking a shaky breath, she pushed herself back to her feet- and screamed again when her pocket buzzed, covering her face when she realised it was just her holocomm. Swallowing down the worst of the panic, she fished it out- just as a hand landed heavily on her shoulder.

Already on edge, she swung around wildly, and her fist stopped just short of connecting with the face of the person behind her; instead, it froze as if if had become wedged in some invisible substance, unable to move even a hairsbreadth further. The reason for that, of course, was that the person behind her was using the Force.

Because the person behind her was Nox.

“You scared the fucking shit out of me!” she blustered, almost on the verge of tears.

Nox grimaced, and released her fist. “I would say ‘ _my apologies_ ’,” she said, “but fear is very much my favoured weapon, and I do find it ever so delightful to dine upon.”

Now that she was looking at her, she could see just how exhausted the Sith looked; Kallathe’s pinkish-red skin was so pale that some of the tendrils on her face looked grey, and her eyes were dull and foggy. Her teeth were gritted as if in pain, and she was leaning quite heavily on Kol’s shoulder, as if she needed the support or she would topple over onto her face.

Pulling herself together, Kol said “What are you even doing here? You’re supposed to be resting-”

“Aboard the Gravestone, which is currently under siege, yes yes,” she said, waving her free hand dismissively. “If you think for one moment I’m going to just lay on my back and wait for death to come to me, well- you don’t know me at all.”

“How did-” Kol rubbed at her face, trying to make sense of the situation. “How did you even get off the ship without them noticing?”

Nox smirked. “I was trained by my first master as an assassin,” she said, almost proudly. “I can move through shadows that most don’t even realise are there.”

Her holocomm kept buzzing shrilly, so she lifted it up to answer.

“Do not tell them I am here,” Kallathe said.

Kol gave her a flat, unimpressed look, and took the call, making sure to keep Koth turned away from Kallathe for the time being.

“You there, doc? Time’s a bit of a factor.”

She nodded. “I’m here,” she said. “Tell me what I need to look for.”

“Have you seen Kallathe?” Lana shouted from the background, and Koth quite pointedly closed his eyes; it was nice to know she was not the only one frustrated by these endless sith shenanigans. Across from her, out of sight of the holo, Kallathe put a single finger up to her lips.

Kol somehow found the strength to not roll her eyes. “I haven’t, so can I please get some instructions on this goddamn console?”

“Okay, okay, so- that big one over on the far wall, you see it? You wanna go to the third sort of, uh, section of buttons, you’ll see a list of numbers descending, yeah?”

She crossed the last few steps across the space, placing the holocomm on top of the terminal so she could have both hands free. “Yeah, I see it.”

“Okay, good- those are the numbers for the different docks around the station, and I’m guessing that every single one should be showing on lockdown, amirite?”

Kol blinked, staring at the numbers. “Well, I mean, maybe? They’re all sort of flashing-”

“Green or red?”

“Neither? Yellow?”

“Goddamn. Um, okay, bear with me a sec...”

Another explosion rocked the tower, and the chains hanging overhead rattled. “I thought time was a factor here!” she yelled, clinging tight to the console in case the floor just decided to vanish out from under her entirely.

“I’m getting there, I’m getting there!” Koth shouted back.

A shadowy presence appeared at her side, and she managed to contain the urge to flinch back wildly from it. “The first elevator is returning,” Kallathe said, her voice no louder than a breath. “I will wait to see who it is before engaging.”

Of course, because things couldn’t possibly get any worse. “Were you followed?” she hissed.

“Were you?” Kallathe cut back.

“Who are you talking to?”

“Nothing!” She turned back to Koth hastily. “Nothing, just... just lots of nerves, you know, just talking to myself.”

He had a datapad in his hand, and he wasn’t looking at her- which was a relief, because if anyone had looked her in the eye just now, they would’ve seen how badly she was lying and immediately called her on it. “Okay, got it- yellow means they’re all on lockdown, got it. So what you wanna do, you wanna find our docking platform-”

“Could we maybe go a little faster?” she asked desperately.

The elevator chimed behind her.

“Find docking platform number six and press the yellow flashing light and when it asks if you want to disengage the lockdown, select yes!”

From behind her, a very familiar voice laughed slowly. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, doctor.”

She closed her eyes. She hadn’t been fast enough.

“Doctor Torr? Can you hear me? What’s going on up there?”

As if he was right behind her, she heard Emperor Arcann say quietly “Hang up the call, Doctor. I’d rather not involve your little friends in this.”

“Doctor Torr? You’re not moving on my screen, if you can hear me, say-” She disconnected the holocomm, cutting Koth off mid sentence. Steeling herself, she turned around. She didn’t even bother to reach for her blaster this time.

As expected, Kallathe was nowhere to be seen- she couldn’t tell whether the Sith was hiding or whether she’d fled in the available lift. But Arcann was there, standing soot stained and proud in the centre of the room, his one visible eye blazing with molten gold as he stared at her. The air around him was quite literally dancing with the power bleeding off of him, like heat waves in the distance on a hot day. It made her eyes ache to look at him directly for too long, but goddess, she didn’t want to give him reason to think she’d looked away out of fear.

“Thank you,” Arcann said, gesturing to the holocomm. “And here I was thinking civility was beneath you.”

For some reason, his snide dismissal of her as some uncouth brute made her all the more angry. “And here I was thinking I’d done the right thing by not shooting you in the fucking head while you were lying on the ground back there,” she snarled, already shaking.

He began to pace slowly, prowling like a predator; she shivered, feeling distinctly like prey. “I tried to appeal to your sense of honour, Doctor, and you repaid me with treachery and duplicity. Forgive me if my estimation of you has gone down significantly.”

There was a whisper of movement out of the corner of her eye- a shadow detached itself from the wall and slithering forward, creeping up on the Emperor from his blind spot. Shit- as much as she didn’t like her own chances against him, she really didn’t think Nox was in any position to be fighting. “If I thought you were strong enough to do this, I would have said as much,” she shouted, trying to be as vague as possible.

It seemed to work- the shadow paused, and Arcann frowned. “What? Strong enough to do what?”

“Ah...” She flailed around for an answer. “Strong enough to win this battle, of course. Why do you think I left you behind?”

At this, he sneered at her. “Because you are a coward?”

“Because it was more important to release the Gravestone than to fight,” she said, wondering just how obvious she had to make it to Nox before the daft woman got the point. If she could keep his attention, then Nox could work the terminal and override the lockdown- if she could just convey that to her in the first place.

“Releasing the Gravestone will only result in a fight,” he said. “I said as much to you- if you allow my father to go free, it will be war.”

The shadow moved closer to him.

Kol’aya gritted her teeth. “You don’t understand-”

“I understand perfectly well, Doctor-”

“I am trying to save your life, you useless fucking idiot!”

It was as if some kind of sonic explosion went off on the platform; there was a thunderous wave of energy, something that knocked all of them off of their feet- including Kallathe- and sent them rolling end over end. Kol’aya caught herself at the last minute from careening right over the edge, clinging desperately to a railing as she scrabbled to get a purchase on the safety of the floor again.

Panting, she crawled on her hands and knees away from the edge before looking up again- and froze.

Standing in the centre of the platform was a fourth figure, someone who had most definitely not been there moments before. He was human in appearance, but ghostly pale and insubstantial as if he was... well, a ghost. Nox stood directly behind him, her face slack and her eyes completely ablaze with a white light that seemed so at odds with the lazy gold and red they were normally.

And before the human, Arcann lay on the ground where he had fallen, propping himself up on one elbow with an expression on his face that could only be described as some heartbreaking combination of utter terror and stunned fury.

... she was gonna go ahead and guess that this was the spirit of his father.

The ghost looked down at Arcann as if he’d just stepped in dogshit. “Have I raised a coward?” it sneered, it’s voice thundering around the room like the crackle of the storm, wild and furious and full of such malice that she could feel it, dripping off of every word. “You think yourself comparable to the Dragon of Zakuul, but you cannot bely your nature- you are a worm, a yellow-bellied snake, a slithering whimpering coward that I should have drowned at birth!”

With an almost feral scream, Arcann surged to his feet, lightsaber igniting with a snarl as he lunged for the ghost and the Sith. As the blade of light cut through the ghost, it vanished, arrogant smirk lingering til the last moment; as the light left Nox’s eyes and she regained her senses, she realised almost too late that she was about to be decapitated. With a furious snarl of her own, she sent him hurtling backwards, and the lightsaber strike missed her.

Arcann came back to his feet instantly, his grace almost catlike despite the rabid look in his eye.

“I’m going to enjoy killing you,” he hissed.

Nox, in her plain tunic and pants, grinned as she pulled an ornate lightsaber hilt of her own from her belt. She held it out before her, and first one spear of lurid pink light appeared from one end, and then one from the other. “Not if I kill you first,” she said.

And then they were on each other, like a pair of raging hurricanes trying to devour one another; Kol couldn’t keep up with the surging flash of the gold against pink, nor could she keep track of their movements. They were phenomenally fast, all but blurs to her eyes, and if it hadn’t been for the grunts and screams and violent laughter that the two of them let out, she wouldn’t have had a clue as to who was winning.

_The Gravestone._

She shook her head, trying to look away from the horrifyingly mesmerising spectacle in front of her, and scurried up the steps and back to the terminal. The lights were still all flashing, but she found the one marked with a six and pressed it, peering out the window to see if there were any changes at all; the Gravestone remained at the dock, the engines powered down. Hadn’t Koth said it would prompt her to go through the override sequence?

“Shit,” she hissed, glancing back over her shoulder at the dueling super wizards and their raging tantrums. “Shit, shit, shit...”

She pressed the button again, and this time the flashing stopped; she saw a screen light up on the far end of the console, and she crawled along the length of the terminal to reach it, glancing back every few seconds to make sure she wasn’t about to get impaled on a glowstick. The screen had a prompt, that much she could tell, but it wasn’t in Galactic Basic- it was in... some kind of pidgin language of Zakuulan and the Outer Rim trade languages? Fuck, she could make out maybe one word, maybe two?

“Goddess, hope you’re feeling generous today,” she whispered, before hitting a button at random. A red light flashed warningly on the console, and she bit back a squeak. “I swear I will stop at the next shrine I get a chance to, please, please just help.”

She hit another button, and this one lit up bright green; looking out the window, she saw the glowing blue locks holding the Gravestone in place abruptly disengage, and the ship slammed heavily into the dock, sending the tiny figures she could see tumbling to the ground. She laughed, hysterically, putting a hand up to her forehead.

She’d done it- she’d freed the Gravestone. Except that the most desperate reason for their escape was currently behind her.

Spinning around and fumbling for her blaster, she yelled “Nox! We have to go!”

Kallathe lunged backwards, putting a modicum of distance between herself and Arcann. Both of them were panting heavily, and both of them bore a number of minor burns over their clothing and exposed skin from the blades. “Well, this has been fun,” she crooned, “but as much as I’d love to stay and taunt you about your daddy issues, it seems I’m needed elsewhere.”

Arcann roared, the sound one of fury and pain. “You will not run from me, father!” he screamed.

He reached out a hand-

Kol’aya felt her blood run cold. She knew what happened now, she’d seen it first hand-

-and wrenched.

Kallathe went soaring through the air, just as she had earlier, but instead of landing in his open arms, she came down on his waiting lightsaber.

Kol’aya sank down onto her knees, staring in horror.

Kallathe, for her part, looked almost surprised; she looked down at the golden blade embedded in her stomach, and then back up at Arcann. His eyes were all but inhuman, burning with a rage that looked likely to devour him from the inside out. “Feel that, father?” he spat.

And then she did the last thing Kol’aya was expecting of her- although in hindsight, having seen Nox’s behaviour over the last twenty-four hours, she absolutely should have expected it. She grabbed Arcann by the wrist, and _pulled_ , the blade sinking in deeper to her belly as she snarled into his face; Arcann’s eyes widened with surprise, and the strength of the fire within them dimmed slightly. “ _Men_ ,” she spat in response, her voice shaking; she bared her teeth in a ruthless grin, feral and unhinged. “Always sticking it in without any effort. Do you have to ask all your conquests that question, or do they just lie there waiting to see if anything happens?”

Kol put both hands up to her mouth, not sure whether to burst into hysterical laughter or hysterical tears.

There was a resounding boom, so close that Kol thought it was going to rattle her bones right out of her body; it was followed by a loud crack, and then the platform started to tilt wildly. In the centre of the room, Kallathe somehow managed to disengage Arcann’s lightsaber just as the floor disappeared from underneath them, and in a blur of shadow, appeared on the topmost platform besides the lifts. She stood for almost a full second at her full height, before her eyes rolled back into her head and she slumped down onto the floor, either dead or close to it.

Kol’aya, for her part, was already clinging tightly to the railing when the tower began to shake, so she was not caught unawares...

... but Arcann was.

She saw his arms flail wildly as the floor slid away at an angle, and he went skidding down the incline towards the horrifying drop below. At the last second, he caught hold of a broken piece of railing with his cybernetic hand, but his weight made it rip away violently from the broken floor panel, leaving him dangling over the abyss without a means of climbing back up.

Kol’aya stared.

He’d just killed- or tried to kill- the one woman she’d been hired to save.

He’d lied to her, intended to kill her.

He’d... saved her life, and she’d repaid him with deception. He’d saved her life, and she’d left him to die in a burning building.

_It would be so much easier for everyone if he died here!_ She ignored her common sense, and started to shuffle across the floor, climbing down the railings inch by inch as if it was some terribly morbid playground suspended hundreds of feet above certain death.

“Arcann!” she yelled, trying to make her voice carry over the howl of the wind and the noise of the battle below. He looked up at her, slowly trying to manoeuvre herself along the railings so that she could have a chance of being within reach of him. She saw him frown as she hooked her knees over one of them and flipped upside down, trying to stretch as far down as she could.

He just stared at her outstretched hand.

“Arcann!” she yelled, her frustration warring with her panic now that she was suspended above the drop with no way of looking away. “Give me your goddamn hand!”

He narrowed his eye.

“This isn’t a trick!” she shouted. “You saved my life, and now I’m saving yours!”

She thought she heard him say something, but the wind snatched away his words.

And then he let go.

“Arcann!” she screamed, watching as he plummeted towards the ground. “You fucking dickhead!”

He vanished into the billowing smoke below, and Kol screamed in frustration, covering her face with her hands as tears burned hot in her eyes; the scream turned to one of real panic as the platform shuddered again, and she awkwardly managed to crawl back up again. Kallathe lay just where she’d left her, unmoving, and Kol’aya dragged her into the lift that Arcann had used to reach them in the first place.

As the door closed behind them with a grinding clang, Kol did her best to swallow down the hiccup of hysterical panic at the enclosed space. She looked down at the unconscious woman on her lap, and something cleared within her. She’d been hired to save this woman’s life, and right now, she wasn’t doing a very good job of that. That was something she could focus on. That was something she could do.

She tried not to think of the fact that the only other person besides Ysaine who had ever saved her life was probably dead because of her.


	6. Chapter 6

Asylum burned.

Kol’aya was choking on the thick smoke as the elevator finally ground to a halt near to the base of the tower- not quite making it level with the floor, but the drop wasn’t an overly large one, in the grand scheme of things. Certainly not significant compared to dropping from the full height of the tower, like a certain dickhead emperor had done only ten minutes earlier.

 _I could’ve saved him_ , she thought, angry and bitter and hysterical as she manhandled Nox out of the elevator and dragged her towards the door. _Fucking childish asshole. Now he’s dead because his ego got the last word in._

She fought back a sob, the sound high-pitched and panicked as she kept coughing.

There were enough abandoned speeders in the street outside the tower that she was able to find one she could hotwire- years of living under occupation and doing everything in her power to piss off the ruling faction had taught her a few useful life skills, if nothing else. She left Nox slumped over the back of the seat and awkwardly set herself in the driver’s seat, wedged forward right up against the engine block to leave enough room for the unconscious sith.

A pair of skytroopers appeared at the end of the street, just as she started to pick up speed.

“ _Fuck_ ,” she hissed under her breath, and gunned the engine.

She barrelled into them at speed, the crunch of their plasteel casing impacting with the speeder still surprisingly loud despite all the noise around them. One of them got her in the head despite her best efforts to duck, maybe an arm or a piece of the chest plate bouncing off of her skull so hard that she saw stars for a moment. Without warning, a silvery barrier flickered to life around the speeder, insubstantial and vaguely starry; she glanced over her shoulder, and nearly recoiled at the sight of a pale, ghostly mist dripping from Nox’s open mouth, and a bright white light shining out of her narrowed eyes. She was still very clearly unconscious, but this...

She could feel a presence, something malevolent and amused. Because of course this day couldn’t get any worse, and she had to get a ghost laughing at her.

She laughed, shrill and hysterical. “The minute I figure out how to flip off a ghost, you’re in for it,” she said, as if that was in any way at all an acceptable or intimidating threat. Just... yelling at a ghost. This was where her life had led her to.

Laughing was really the only sensible response.

A volley of blaster fire ricocheted off of the air in front of her, and she shrieked, jerking the speeder to the side out of instinct; but the bolts never landed on her skin, instead blocked by the insubstantial shimmer hanging around them as they drove. She shuddered as she righted the bike, thankful that she hadn’t driven into a wall in her panic. “Ohh, never taking a job with Force-users again,” she said under her breath, voice shaking. “Never taking a job with Force-users again. Never again.”

Her commlink buzzed, and she awkwardly fished it from her jacket pocket one-handed as they raced through the streets. “What?” she snarled, her voice coming out shrill and ragged. The smoke was beginning to make her head spin, and concentrating on driving and talking at the same time seemed like more trouble than it was worth.

“Doctor, thank the Force,” came the response, marred by static that crackled so loudly she winced, “are you with Nox? Do you need help?”

_I’m trying to rescue you, you insufferable woman._

The speeder skidded around the corner as she lost her concentration for a moment; the docks were right ahead of her, and she barrelled through the abandoned customs gate, crashing the speeder into the huge pile of deactivated skytroopers lying just inside the gate. The Gravestone lay ahead of her, the cargo bay still yawning open- and on the dock itself, Senya was locked in furious combat with a young woman who she could recognise even at this distance as High Justice Vaylin.

“I’m right here,” she started to say into the comm, but there were already figures running towards them, skirting around the duelling women. There was so much noise, and her throat felt like it had been shredded by a thousand razor blades, but she still slithered from the speeder on shaky legs; someone or several someones grabbed Nox and raced her inside, and someone steadied her when she tried to walk forward and found herself wobbling.

It was the young woman Evie, who didn’t really seem to be Jedi or Sith or anything Zakuulan, but who still carried a lightsaber like one. “You look like shit, Doc,” she yelled over the noise, her grin no longer easygoing but instead remarkably forced. She had a burn mark on one cheek, and a long slash up one sleeve that seemed to have been from the same attack. “What happened?”

She tried to speak, but it was like broken glass rattling around in her lungs when she swallowed. “I saw Arcann,” she finally wheezed, tasting blood at the back of her mouth. It seemed sort of surreal to say it- I saw the Emperor of the entire galaxy, the son of a god. We talked, we argued, he threatened to kill me, he held me in his arms, I tried to save his life.

It sounded beyond surreal. It sounded like utter nonsensical fantasy.

Evie’s eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything. Didn’t ask the inevitable question- why are you still alive?- but didn’t call her a liar either. She took her by the hand instead, and all but dragged her over the dock and into the cargo bay. “Senya!” she bellowed, setting Kol’aya down on a stack of crates; that seemed like a good idea, a nice idea. She sat and she watched as Evie turned and sprinted back towards Asylum, igniting her lightsaber as she ran. “Senya, we gotta go!”

The Gravestone shuddered, and began to pull away from the dock; Evie remained perched on the very edge of the cargo hatch, not at all bothered by the fact that she was standing over an impossible drop into the depths of a gas giant. Kol shuddered, remembering the fear she’d felt trapped in the elevator, wondering if she was going to die in that tiny cage, plummeting into the depths of the crushing gases until she was compressed to the size of a bean.

She started to cry.

In front of her, she saw a blur of light as Evie batted a lightsaber out of the air with her own, as if she was trying to hit a homerun in boff-ball. A moment later, Senya vaulted up onto the platform beside her, grabbing for Evie’s outstretched hand, and the two of them stood for a moment looking down at the woman they’d left on the platform below.

An ungodly scream, anguished and furious and terrified, echoed up towards them.

Arcann hadn’t screamed when he’d fallen to his death, but Vaylin screamed when they left her to hers.

“ _Can we get that hatch closed right now?_ ” came a voice over the ship’s internal speakers, frantic and panicked. “ _We’re gonna break atmo in about twenty seconds, and I’m assuming most people on board like breathing._ ”

She was tired. And so very, very scared.

“ _We need Doctor Torr in the medical bay,_ ” another voice said urgently, ringing over the speakers. Of course, they wanted her to wave her hands like magic and fix Nox, because damned Force-users fixed everything with magic. Nox had been stabbed by a goddamn lightsaber, what exactly did they expect her to do to fix that? She wasn’t magic.

“Hey, doc, you in there?” Evie crouched before her, clicking in fingers in front of her face. “Not looking so crash hot there.”

“Please don’t say anything about crashing,” Senya said, her face pale and pinched as she came to stand beside them. Her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying. Maybe it was just the smoke. “Doctor Torr, are you alright?” She took her hand in hers, her fingers slightly cooler than hers as she squeezed gently. “Doctor? Doctor, can you understand what I’m saying?”

“ _Doctor Torr to the medical bay urgently, please._ ”

She couldn’t stop crying. There was blood in her mouth.

Asylum burned.

And her thoughts were on Arcann as the Gravestone opened fire on the Eternal Fleet and lunged through the opening in their defenses to flee.

_Why had he saved her?_

* * *

Asylum burned.

With the Gravestone- and its’ treacherous cargo- gone, there was no need for the Eternal Fleet to remain or to maintain the lockdown, so the skies over the port city were now flooded with ships and shuttles of all makes and models trying to flee from the collapsing station. When his staff aboard the flagship contacted him in the aftermath of the failed confrontation with the ancient ship, he had been lying on his back in the rubble of a ruined building, staring upwards as he watched the control spar collapse and wondered if Doctor Torr had perished in the conflagration.

Everything hurt. He had misjudged Nox, he had misjudged Doctor Torr- fuck, he had even misjudged himself, because while no mortal could have survived such a fall, he’d certainly been more optimistic about his chances when he’d elected to drop instead of taking Kol’aya’s outstretched hand.

_May I call you Kol’aya?_

_No, you may not._

It felt petty and thrilling to call her Kol’aya in his head. _Kol’aya_. She couldn’t outwit him in his head. She couldn’t yell at him in his head. She couldn’t speak back to him like she was his equal in his head.

_Take that, Kol’aya._

_“You fucking dickhead.”_ He heard it as clearly as he had when she’d shouted it at him as he’d plummeted away from her, her voice thick with anguish and frustration. Did she think he was dead? Did that make her sad?

His commlink pinged urgently as he lay there, the concrete shattered around him from the impact of his fall, and after ignoring it for a moment or two, he managed to prise his arm free of the wreckage to take the call. “What?” he snarled, his voice coming out bizarrely mechanical as the internal software in his mask continued to fail. He could taste the smoke now, where he hadn’t been able to earlier.

“Your Majesty,” came the response, the voice similarly marred by static, “do you require assistance?”

He looked at the hazy, dust-filled air around him, and the crackling flames not too distant. “No,” he said, refusing a rescue for the second time that hour. He closed his eyes. “Where is my sister?”

“High Justice Vaylin awaits you on the dock. We have sent ahead a shuttle.”

That was something at least. For a terrified heartbeat, he’d been waiting to hear that she was dead, that he was alone in the universe. “Tell her I will be there shortly,” he said, already contemplating how to get up with the least amount of pain.

_Why not simply slither on your belly like the worm that you are?_

He flinched, hearing his father’s words so clearly in his head, despite the fact that he was not present to speak them. Or at least... he lifted his head and looked around. No, he was definitely not here. And if he was lucky, maybe he was dead atop the control spar, his puppet Nox dead either from the lightsaber wound to the gut or the destruction of the tower her body lay in. The latter, of course, implied that Doctor Torr was dead as well, and...

He didn’t want that. He didn’t know why he didn’t want that... probably because he didn’t want her to have died thinking she’d gotten the last word in. Calling him such obscene names, not a lick of respect in her. It was galling and shocking and fascinating.

She would’ve made an exquisite conquest. A shame.

Her lekku had hung down towards him as she’d dangled upside down on the broken edge of the platform, her fingers straining to reach closer. The look in her eyes had been terrifying. The only person to have ever stared death in the face to save his life was Thexan, and he-

He cut off that train of thought before it could continue.

Thexan was dead. It was likely Kol’aya was as well.

When he’d finally crawled from the rubble, his shoulder twitched sporadically with the small surges of electricity he could feel running unchecked between the mechanical components and his flesh. It didn’t hurt, so much, but it was irritating, and when he tried to clench his hand into a fist, he found that the arm wouldn’t quite obey his directives. He snarled angrily at it, doing his best to ignore it as he limped through the collapsing space port towards the docks where his sister waited.

The Gravestone was gone, the maglocks hanging limply from their struts; one of them was damaged, with sparks showering down onto the docking platform. There were bodies everywhere, Skytroopers and Knights and Horizon Guard scattered amongst the civilians; most frustratingly, he could see the ornate black and gold armour of Exarchs Forra Morge and Elam Taka amongst the dead, and his hand twitched in response to his anger.

Vaylin stood alone on the dock, her hood pushed back and her hair hanging loose and lank around her face; if she had brushed it prior to their attack on Asylum, he couldn’t tell now, because the winds whipping up and through the station had made an untameable mess of it now.

He came to a stop before her, and she looked... well, she looked like shit. “What happened to you?” he said, the words coming out snappish from exhaustion.

She crossed her arms defensively, her tear streaked cheeks filthy from the soot and the smoke in the air. “I saw Mother,” she said primly, with the sort of haughty disgust one might use to express their distaste at having seen a large, rabid dog wandering loose in an expensive restaurant.

As to the actual words themselves- they might have hurt more, or had more of an impact, if he’d heard them an hour or two before. So their Mother had finally roused herself from the shadowy corners of the Empire, no longer content to play the braindead stooge to the throne, so what? “I saw Father,” he said in response.

Vaylin’s eyes narrowed as she took him in, looking at the charred edges to his fine armour and the lightsaber slashes he’d only narrowly avoided, taking in the way his mechanical arm sat at slightly the wrong angle, fingers twitching ever so slightly.

She didn’t ask.

He didn’t offer anything more.

“I want to go home,” she said petulantly, the crossed arms turning more into a hug; still defensive, though. Behind him, another vast explosion sounded, and the platform beneath their feet rumbled ominously.

Father was gone. Mother was gone. The Outlander was gone. The bizarrely incomprehensible woman who had spent the better part of an hour yelling obscenities at him only to risk her own damned life hanging upside down from a crumbling skyscraper to save him was gone.

He was tired. And so very, very lonely.

He rubbed at his face, his fingers catching on the edge of the mask. “Let’s go home,” he said, turning her to face the ship and guiding her on board with a hand in the middle of her back. Asylum burned, and his father was free.

And yet his thoughts were on Doctor Torr as their shuttle pulled away from the dock and drifted carefully into range of the flagship’s tractor beam.

_Why had she tried to save him?_

* * *

_Alliance Headquarters, Odessen, Wild Space  
Several days later_

Odessen was colder than she’d been expecting- and she wasn’t just talking about the weather.

She wasn’t a fan of the fortified citadel the Alliance were in the process of building for themselves, because the rough hewn stone walls and the dark underground corridors reminded her far too much of Ryloth. There was a part of her, a quiet part of her, that sneered at the coarse tunnels and uneven chambers- at least Kala’uun had beauty and dignity in her deep hallways, the red stone carefully tended and polished, worn smooth by the hands of a hundred generations. That was where her arrogance ended and her discomfort took over; she hated the weight of the stone over her head, the cloying, crushing darkness that crept in when the overhead lights didn’t quite fill the chambers with enough light.

The chill of the forests crept into the tunnels, seeping into the stone and refusing to leave. She’d spent her first day on Odessen confined to the makeshift medical suites deep below ground, hooked up to a ventilator while they assessed the damage to her lungs. Nox, as she understood it, was still unconscious, resting in what passed for an intensive care unit in these temporary accommodations. They weren’t terribly bad, all things considered- certainly for a field hospital, she’d seen worse. But it was very easy to see that it hadn’t been designed or outfitted by anyone with anything more than a passing knowledge of medicine.

Maybe it was unkind of her to think so poorly of them- after all, they saw to her recovery very efficiently. The efficiency of their facilities didn’t translate into warmth, however, something she was coming to realise with a sort of bitter resignation.

Kol’aya sat at the end of a long desk in an elegantly styled chamber, with plush carpets and wooden inlays and curved windows along an entire wall that followed the shape of the dome in which they sat. They had a very generous view out across the pristine pine forests, the occasional rocky crag breaking through the treeline to break the monotony; it felt very... soulless, if that was the right way to word it, this sleek room with the understated furniture and a view that was impressive without being too exhilarating.

She felt like it summed up the Alliance quite well- and the women who led it. Sleek, intelligent, understated, but trying so very carefully to not be too controversial.

“I already told Lord Beniko everything on the flight back from Asylum,” she said, tapping her fingers rhythmically on the tabletop. The surface was smooth and glassy, and it reflected the faces of the women who sat gathered at the other end, almost pointedly having left a few chairs between her and them. They were all human- because of course they were- and they were all Force-users, because of _course_ they were. “If you have reason to doubt my word-”

“That’s not it at all, Doctor Torr,” said the first woman, a lanky sort of dark haired woman with a thick Balmorran accent. She’d been introduced as Master Dawnstar, as if that had meant something and she’d been expected to recognise her. “Please, there’s no need for such hostility-”

“Maybe I’d be less inclined to be hostile if I didn’t feel like I was being interrogated,” Kol said flatly.

“Do you feel you have something to hide that requires interrogation in the first place?” the second woman said, also dark-haired and pale, but stout and short to the other woman’s tall and narrow. She, at least, was someone she had heard of, but only in her public persona as the Wrath.

Kol’aya wasn’t scared of her. “No,” she said, staring at her boldly, “I don’t.”

The other two women at the table were at least more familiar to her, because she had travelled for several days with Lord Beniko and Master Xo and accompanied them on the jaunt to Zakuul in the first place. Lord Beniko, she was coming to realise, was a blunt and precise woman who expected immediate obedience in all things, and Master Xo was not as soft and matronly as her age might have made her seem. “And you still have no idea as to why Emperor Arcann might have followed you to the control spar?” Lana asked, her words just shy of being bitten off in irritation.

“I do not,” Kol said, just as terse.

“You met him in the Scion’s enclave, alone-”

“I was _tricked_ into going to the Scion’s enclave, _alone_ ,” she said, from between gritted teeth, “and when I told Lord Beniko, she dismissed it as a joke. All of which you already know, because I have reiterated this multiple times now.”

“There’s no need for such hosti-”

“If you say there’s no need for such hostility again, I’m going to flip this goddamn table over,” she said bluntly. “Because quite frankly, I highly resent the implication that I crept out to meet with that _lek’nat_ asshole to scheme against you all, and it’s wearing real thin on my patience the way everyone seems to want to gaslight me and ask me seven million times if I’m _sure_ I didn’t just sneak out and forget to mention it!” Her voice slowly rose throughout the tirade, until she was all but shouting, her hands clenched into fists against the glass tabletop.

The four women looked at one another, and this time it was Xolani who attempted to speak. “Please, Doctor Torr, let me try to explain our concerns,” she said carefully. “The Emperor has never once left The Spire in the entirety of his reign. He has scarcely even been shown to leave the palace grounds- so for him to do so now, only to target you instead of Darth Nox, is immensely worrying for your future safety.”

Kol’aya felt a cold shiver pass down her spine. “Are you threatening me, Master Xo?”

The Jedi looked exasperated. “Not at all, doctor- but surely even you can understand that if the Emperor has singled you out, that poses a significant threat to your personal safety and ability to move about with impunity. If the Emperor calls for your arrest, what will you do?”

“The same thing I did last time he did just that,” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “This isn’t exactly my first rodeo at this shitfest.”

Silence fell for a moment, and the Wrath continued to tap her fingers against the tabletop, her silvery grey eyes not quite as unnerving as the Scions, but unpleasant to look upon nonetheless. “And you are sure you can think of nothing else that transpired between you that could explain his fixation on you, or his reappearance in the control spar?” she finally said, her voice so cold that she fought off another shiver.

It was like talking to a wall. “As I have said in every other goddamn interrogation you people have put me through- no, _nothing else happened_. We just _talked_.”

... alright, it was like talking to a wall while carefully sidestepping certain details in the conversation. Like the fact that him admitting to reading up on her had gotten under her skin, or the way his voice had cracked ever so slightly when describing the horror of a dead world. Like the moment when he’d risked everything to save her from the runaway shuttle, or the moment when she’d repaid that sacrifice with cowardice and left him to die in the ruins.

Or the pinnacle of all her stupidity, when she’d risked everything in turn to run back for him, begging him to take her hand. What was she supposed to have done if he’d actually reached up and taken her hand, huh? What in the name of the fucking goddess was she going to have done if she’d found herself lying on the floor of the control spar with the fucking emperor, right after he’d tried to kill the woman she was hired to save?

It wasn’t like that very question hadn’t kept her up for hours in the middle of the night, staring at the ceiling and wondering what might have transpired. Were the flashes of regret just in her imagination? Was the outraged sense of justice and compassion- however askew it was- just an act, or was there something else in there behind the mask?

And did it matter, in the end? He’d refused her help. They’d had word out of Zakuul that he wasn’t dead, despite all the odds, and he’d very abruptly and ruthlessly condemned them as terrorists and mercenaries. She was back on the Most Wanted list.

Whatever she thought she might have glimpsed in his face in the aftermath of the shuttle crash, when she’d hurtled into his arms and stared at him, the moment stunned and intimate and fragile, was an illusion. He’d picked up his father’s mantle without a moment of hesitation, and ruled the galaxy in tune to his whims for five years. She’d lost everything under his rule.

_I have put myself at your mercy, doctor, because out of everyone caught up in this terrible endeavour, I know I can trust you to do the right thing._

She looked across the table at the Force-users, watching her with varying degrees of suspicion and concern in their eyes, and prayed that none of them were mind-readers. “We just talked,” she lied. “I didn’t want him to kill me, so I just stalled for time. When the attack began, I escaped, but he must have been monitoring the comm channels and knew I was going to the control spar. Either that, or he figured the same as we did, that someone had to go up there to get the Gravestone loose.”

“That’s a lot of conjecture, doctor.”

“Well, then, ask Nox how _she_ knew to go to the control spar, since she made her merry little way there as well. Oh wait, you can’t, because she went against my fucking orders and tried to fight while she was still weak, and nearly died because of it.”

Lana’s eyes were luridly yellow in the room, to the point that they almost seemed to be glowing; Xolani, having glanced at her briefly, clasped her hands together on the table and took the initiative. “Thank you, Doctor Torr,” she said. “What you have done for us- for everyone- cannot be understated. I know this repetitive line of questioning must be frustrating for you, but-”

“But we only have your best interests at heart,” Master Dawnstar finished.

The day a human had her best interests at heart would be the day her lekku fell off and the red sands turned white. “Can I go?” she asked pointedly.

“We will arrange for your fee to be deposited into your account, and for now you have answered our questions sufficiently, yes.”

“Let me rephrase that,” Kol’aya said. “I would like to go _home_.”

“That is not advisable at the moment,” the Wrath said. “You are currently one of the most wanted individuals in the galaxy- the bounty on your head is astronomical. You will not be safe should you choose to leave Odessen.”

A prisoner, then.

_I had assumed that you were being held by the Alliance against your will, and would appreciate the opportunity to enact revenge upon them._

“Thank you for your time, Doctor Torr,” Master Xo said placidly.

She didn’t like cages.

* * *

_Palace of the Eternal Dragon, Zakuul, Wild Space  
That same day_

Home was more uncomfortable than he remembered it being- and that wasn’t something he’d had to think about in a very long time.

Granted, it had been a long time since he had had the opportunity to leave Zakuul, or even the palace, and coming back to it after the tumultuous confrontation on Asylum was harder than he could have imagined. For the first time in five years, it didn’t feel like a fortress or a sanctuary, a place wholly and unquestionably his; when he walked back into The Spire, and when he stalked along the polished floor towards the throne, he felt it.

His father’s shadow. His mocking laughter. Something cold enough to make his skin prickle and yet hot enough to make him break out in a nervous sweat beneath his leathers. This was different to the paranoia that had claimed him far too regularly throughout the years because this time it was _real_. It was not a figment of his imagination any longer, a lingering phantom from his nightmares watching him from the corner of his eye, only to vanish when he turned towards it. It was real. His father was alive, and very real.

The stars beyond the glass dome no longer seemed like jewels in the sky, like something precious and marvellous. Now they felt like eyes, a hundred thousand million eyes all staring down at him and staring and judging and silently screaming in his head.

Every shadow was his father’s silhouette. Every shuffling whisper echoing through the corridors was the sound of Valkorion walking up behind him. The golden halls that he had ruled with impunity these last five years were now nothing more than the gilded bars of a prison cell, the elegant nooks and alcove now the twisting paths of a labyrinth. He was trapped, and he knew it.

It was only a matter of time, now.

He was not going to make it easy, however- he was going to fight with everything in him, and take as many people down with him as necessary if it stopped or thwarted his father. He wasn’t afraid of the prospect of dying, but he was afraid of his father, so if his death stopped his father, he would consider that a victory; ideally, he would make him suffer as much as possible before that, if only to repay a fraction of the pain he had inflicted on him from before he could even walk.

To that end, he was going to destroy the Alliance.

He sat sprawled in his throne, trying to ignore the way the ships of the Eternal Fleet occasionally drifted between him and the sun, causing misshapen shadows to flicker and dance around the curved chamber. He didn’t flinch, because he had been raised not to flinch even in the face of excruciating pain or horrifying torture, but every now and then one of them would catch his eye, and he would think for just a moment: _this is it_.

The two women standing before him had no indication as to his inner turmoil, and both had been nothing but cautiously polite and diplomatic in their behaviour so far. Lord Jayal Zhivalla, the current Imperial Ambassador, and Senator Alauni, the current Republic Ambassador, both of them aliens and both of them arrogant, defiant women who were tolerably cool towards him and his court, and downright icy to one another. He wondered if it was a sign of subtle disrespect that both subjugated governments sent an alien to represent them, when they were all but second class citizens in the Empire and endured quite open bigotry even in the allegedly democratic Republic.

But he also knew that both women were the lovers to their respective leaders, and that lent a deeper layer of intrigue to the proceedings. Did Acina and Saresh trust their own people so little that they only felt secure in sending their own lovers to spy and to parry and to play at grovelling at his feet? Or did they think that it was a gesture of humility and genuflection on their part, sacrificing the company of the woman they loved in order to further abase themselves before him?

Or was he reading too much into it all, and they simply wanted him to be guessing at their motives, wondering whether or not he was being played by them like a harp?

He wouldn’t be controlled or manipulated. Let them play their games- he held their fate in his hands, and they couldn’t talk back to him at all without staring death in the face.

_I haven’t heard a good enough reason yet not to keep shooting until I can see daylight through the other side of your skull._

... although apparently for some people, that was not the significant threat that it was supposed to be. He’d done his best to put Kol’aya out of his thoughts- Kol’aya Kol’aya Kol’aya, not Doctor Torr, don’t call me anything other than Doctor Torr, can’t stop me now Kol’aya- but it was difficult. Especially when Senator Alauni stood before him, her skin golden and her lips painted, and even if she roused absolutely nothing in him but contempt, it was hard not to draw the obvious comparison with Kol’aya.

But the Senator turned Ambassador was a curt woman, eyes always calculating. Kol’aya was blunt, spoke her mind, wasn’t afraid of him. She would loathe the candied words and double talk of diplomacy, of that he was sure.

“As I have already explained, your Immortal Majesty, Lord Beniko lost favour with the Dark Council a number of years ago,” Lord Zhivalla was saying, and he forced himself to concentrate on her irritatingly breathy voice. The Pureblood was a tall and elegant woman, draped in veils and golden jewellery that made her brutish physique almost tolerable; indeed, she made Nox look positively feral by comparison. “If you have reason to question how we conduct our internal affairs-”

“As if the word of a Sith can be considered anything other than questionable,” Senator Alauni said loftily, lips pursed sourly. “Questionable is the kindest thing I could think of to call the conduct of the Dark Council-”

“As opposed to the ill-informed rabble in the Republic, who can gain a seat of power as long as one is wealthy enough, regardless of how uneducated,” Zhivalla quipped back.

Arcann gritted his teeth beneath his mask, and his mechanical arm twitched; the buzz of the broken internal components was growing increasingly harder to ignore, but he was rabidly determined not to undergo more surgery. If he had to endure any sort of maintenance, he would be awake for it, or it would not occur. His father would not catch him drugged and unawares. “I did not summon you here to bicker with one another,” he growled, attempting to make a fist with his hand and giving up after a moment when the fingers curled and locked despite his best efforts; he let his arm hang over the side of the throne to hide the weakness. “If your petty squabbles are of so much interest to you, I will have the arena cleared for you and you can deal with one another in person. The bloodbath will at least be more interesting than your tedious platitudes.”

“I’m afraid it wouldn’t be worthy of you, your Immortal Majesty,” Zhivalla said. “My counterpoint would hardly be a taxing opponent-”

“Do not _threaten_ me, Zhivalla, unless you are prepared to follow through on that threat,” Alauni snarled.

Arcann closed his eyes briefly, fighting the urge to throw them both out. “Ladies,” he growled, “my patience is wearing thin.”

Alauni turned back to him, hands clasped before her in a pose that was probably meant to convey some sort of demure air, but just made her look condescending. “Your _Majesty_ ,” she said, pointedly not using the honorific of Immortal, “I am unsure as to why you think this is a Republic issue, given that Darth Nox was responsible for the deaths of many, many Republic citizens, and is- as are all Dark Council members- decidedly unwelcome in our territories.”

The temperature dropped abruptly in the chamber. “ _Don’t_ ,” he spat, “speak to me like I am a _fool_ , Senator.”

She dropped her gaze. “I would not dream of it, your Majesty,” she said.

She was lying. She was so glib and transparent, so wrapped in layers of word play and false etiquette. Kol’aya would hate her. “My staff provided your office with the security footage from Darth Nox’s escape,” he said flatly, forcing himself to relax against the back of the seat. He waved a hand over the controls, and an image was projected in the air between them- it was an image of the landing platform outside the Treasury, with all of the terrorists frozen mid stride. With a gesture, two of them started flashing, highlighting them to the ambassador. “These two have been identified as Jedi Masters Xolani Xo and Navin Hervoz. Both Republic citizens.”

The ambassador didn’t even bat an eyelash. “The Jedi Order is a separate entity to the democratic structures of the Republic,” she said smoothly. “The legal jurisdiction is awkward at the best of times, but we did provide your staff with the information we were able to garner, as requested.”

“I am not _asking_ for their schedules, ambassador, I am _asking_ you to account for the actions of your citizens in enacting terrorist attacks against my city and my people!” By the last word, he was half out of his seat, both hands clenched into fists as he started to rise, his voice rising to a roar. Neither of the women flinched, which in itself seemed admirable, but he was hardly in the mood to commend them for something so insignificant. “Two Republic citizens, regardless of any legal exemptions the Jedi Order allows for, freed a known war criminal, and all you can do is shrug and dismiss it?”

She bowed her head, not quite a nod, but he assumed it was supposed to be some kind of acknowledgement of the point. “When Master Hervoz was implicated in the murder of-”

“Convicted in absentia, I believe,” Zhivalla supplied helpfully.

“-in the murder of Knight Captain Serren,” Alauni said, continuing as if she hadn’t been interrupted by the Pureblood, “we cooperated with all Zakuulan investigations, including handing over several of our own citizens who aided and abetted the accused to the relevant Zakuulan authorities. We did everything in our power to see that this crime was treated with the severity it deserved.”

“And I think you’ll find no Zakuulan citizens have ever been murdered in Imperial territories,” Zhivalla said, unable to help throwing in the last barb.

Arcann stared at her flatly. “Nox murdered my father,” he said.

“But not in Imperial territories,” she countered. “And neither did we defend Nox’s actions, but instead deferred to Zakuul’s need for justice for such a heinous crime. Lord Jen’zuska was stripped of her rank and seat on the Dark Council many years ago now.”

He let his face come to rest in one hand, rubbing at the exposed half of his forehead. “You both seek to placate me with honeyed words, as if this were simply a matter of soothing my ego and not an act of terrorism carried out by your citizens as a precursor to war-”

“Your Majesty,” Alauni started to say.

“ _Do not interrupt me!_ ” The words thundered outwards like a shockwave, both women buffeted as if by a great wind as they both staggered back a step; the shout bounced around the vast chamber, ricocheting off of glass and echoing over and over again in a capella chorus in discordant harmony with itself. “You lie and you sneer and your twist yourselves into knots to avoid accountability, assuming I am too stupid to be anything but satisfied with your cloying cronyism!”

The two women glanced at each other, for once united in their uncertainty in the face of his rage. “Your Immortal Majesty,” Zhivalla tried, but he was done with them.

“ _Get out_ ,” he spat, slouching back in the throne and waving dismissively at them. “Pray I do not have your embassies ejected from Zakuul altogether.”

He sat and stared coldly as they hurried for the exit, their footsteps echoing against the marble tiles before they stepped into the glass elevators and began the rather stomach-churning journey back to the palace below. Alone in the aching silence of The Spire, he let his thoughts swirl around his anger and his frustration until it reached a fever pitch of rage and paranoia and he _screamed_.

Had the throne room not been constructed to house a god, he might have destroyed it in his temper. As it was, the structure still shook, the tremors rumbling down and down and down, through the spine of the city. The most humble of groundquakes was always a threat to such an engineering marvel as The Spire, and had been constructed to withstand them- but again, most groundquakes came from below, not from the stars above.

When he finally ran out of breath, his throat was ragged and hoarse, and his chest was heaving with the strain; the sweat on his back was cold, cold, cold.

With shaking fingers, he issued a command through the throne to Vaylin’s private commlink; his robotic hand twitched, and he aggressively flexed it over and over, forcing it to clench into a fist regardless of how hard it was, or the grinding crunching noises he could hear coming from the internal mechanisms. Vaylin, when she answered, had clearly been in the middle of some kind of sparring session- her cloak was discarded and her hair was pulled back in a loose, sweaty braid. “What?” she snapped, foregoing any sort of greeting.

After the disrespect shown to him by the ambassadors, the informality of it chafed at him, and he gritted his teeth. “Do you want to find mother?”

She crossed her arms, glaring at him. “What kind of question is that?”

He would not be disrespected. He would not let his father drag the galaxy into war. He would not be afraid of him. “Choose five planets,” he said, “two from the Republic, two from the Sith, and one independent.”

Vaylin didn’t even blink. “And?” she said, the word little more than a snarl.

“And show them what the cost of disrespect is,” he said. “You may take the Third Fleet. Show them what Zakuul thinks of those who would hide Alliance terrorists in their ranks.”

Her expression slowly brightened, until she was grinning almost ear to ear, a violently fanatical gleam in her eyes. “You always do have the _best_ presents, brother dear,” she cooed, before abruptly disconnecting.

He breathed out slowly, his chest and throat aching in the aftermath of his outburst. He would stop the Alliance. He would stop his father. If people had to die-

_Suppose I’m not really happy with the idea that people are gonna get hurt on account of me._

Well, if Doctor Torr hadn’t wanted people to get hurt, she shouldn’t have joined the Alliance.

* * *

_Alliance Headquarters, Odessen, Wild Space  
Several weeks later_

The early morning sunshine was muted by the mists that clung to the forests and chasms of Odessen’s mountains, the soft gold filtered into almost solid beams that cut through the trees at an angle. It was briskly cold, not enough that it hurt, but enough that it was sharp in Kol’aya’s lungs as she ran, her feet pounding over the rocks as she made her way along the ridge and around the growing township. There were folk out in the fields as she made her way past, mostly twi’lek folk like herself, trying to get as much done before the sun climbed too high in the sky and the day grew too warm. A small herd of rycrits was ambling slowly from a barn, their honking snorts punctuated by high pitched snarls as they nipped at one another before settling again.

It was all very serene and pastoral, and very much at odds with the bright colours and all-hours sort of anarchy that engulfed Pirate’s Bay, or the far more established metropolitan feel of Kala’uun. She wasn’t sure whether or not she liked it, to be honest- it was peaceful, sure, and most of the folk in the Alliance had been pleasant enough in the time she’d been staying here.

But cages could still be pretty.

She was immensely frustrated and more than a little frightened about what the Alliance intended for her; she didn’t think they planned to kill her at all, nothing quite so sinister, but the bland refusal to discuss her freedom or her desire to leave Odessen was just as terrifying, if not more so. She was still a prisoner, still trapped.

So she ran.

It was a good way to burn off the frustration, if nothing else- what better way to start the day than with an hour or so in the brisk cold and the solitude of her own thoughts, away from the bustle of the base? The first time she’d gone for a run, she’d been promptly apprehended by the perimetre guards, and she’d just as promptly given one of them a black eye; when she’d returned to the base several hours later, it was to the news that an armed rescue party was being formed, under the assumption that the peculiar and violent native creatures had taken a fancy to her.

They’d initially tried to send an escort with her.

They didn’t do that anymore.

Today was no different, and she nodded in greeting to the few twi’lek settlers who were close enough to look her way as she ran along the edge of the forest. She had a blaster strapped to one hip, and a water canteen on the other, and her magnetic headphones clipped tight around her earcones were thudding a pleasant drumming bass line. She was breathing heavy, the uneven ground rocky and sometimes hard to gauge in the long grass. Her thoughts were elsewhere, her focus only on the rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other, the pounding thud of her pulse, the ragged in and out of her breath as she kept up a steady speed.

It was early- probably not even yet six o’clock, by Odessen’s timekeeping at least. She was still getting used to the longer rotation, because after years of Rishi’s twenty hour days, suddenly gaining an extra six was extremely bewildering on her body. She disturbed a few birds as she ran, but paid them no heed; the only thing she had to worry about were the flickering shadows that sometimes chose to take a vaguely humanoid form, lunging at her from rocky outcrops or from the treetops overhead.

And as she ran, she contemplated her situation, as she always did. She thought about storming into the offices of the Alliance leaders, and demanded to be let free. She thought about commandeering a ship, or stowing away on one of the many shuttles that ferried troops and supplies down to the planet’s surface via the massive overhead space station. She thought about what she was going to do when she got out of here, and what planet to disappear into in order to shake off the attention of both the Alliance and Zakuul.

She thought about Arcann. Or Emperor Arcann, she probably should’ve been calling him. She thought about him far more than was sensible. Stupid, arrogant, egotistical asshole; stupid, violent dickhead with his stupid, violent dickhead tantrums, why had she even wasted her breath trying to save him, not killing him in the first place was surely good enough to clear the debt she owed him for saving her life, stupid, stupid, _stupid_ -

A flash of colour caught her eye, and she turned her head just in time to be crash-tackled from above by a small blue blur. With an oomph, she stumbled and lost her footing, skidding to the ground in a tangle of limbs and dirt. She hit a rock with her knee, and she grazed her elbow; lying wheezing on the grass, staring dazedly up at the pale golden sky that was slowly turning blue, she tried to focus on the small, impish face that appeared in her field of vision.

“Hi!” Anya said excitedly, all but sitting on her chest. “Hi, Kol’aya, hi, I caught you! You were going the most fastest and I-”

“Anya,” she rasped, trying to get her breath back, “you’re suffocating me.”

The little twi’lek princess scrambled to sit beside her on the ground, all but bouncing up and down on her knees as Kol slowly climbed into an upright position, wincing as she did so. “What are you doing out here Kol’aya? Mama says that most people sleep now, but I’m not tired, are you tired? I’m not tired-”

“Anya,” Kol said, pressing a hand to her knee with a poorly restrained groan, “what are you doing out here? Where’s your mother?”

“Over there,” Anya said, pointing enthusiastically over her shoulder as she continued to bounce. Of course, that didn’t really clarify much. “She was meditationing, um, and I was supposed to be too because Mama says it will help me focus, but it’s so boring! And-”

Kol held a hand up for silence, rubbing at her poor abused knee. “You can take me back to your mother?” At Anya’s enthusiastic nod, she repressed a sigh. “Okay. Let’s do that.”

She climbed to her feet with another groan, brushing herself off and grimacing at the large grass stain on her legs; when she held her hand out to Anya, the little girl took it eagerly, swinging off of it like it was play equipment.

“Why are you running Kol’aya? Are you playing tag or chasey?”

She closed her eyes briefly as they walked, letting Anya lead her through the trees. “I was running because I like the exercise,” she said. “It’s good to clear your head.”

“Can we play tag or chasey?”

“You promised to take me to your mother, you aren’t gonna break a promise on me, are you?”

Anya squeaked, and picked up speed, all but dragging her back in the direction of the twi’lek settlement. Just before they would have broken through the treeline and back into the open space before the tilled fields, they came across a small grove- and in that small grove was a blanket spread across the cold grass, upon which sat Ona’la.

Or, probably, a more accurate description would be to say upon which _slept_ Ona’la; she was upright, with her chin drooping down towards her chest, her eyes closed as she snored softly. The poor woman looked utterly exhausted, but was admirably still in the standard meditative pose she’d seen most Force-users prefer. On the blanket in front of her, swaddled tightly against the cold, was a tiny blue twi’lek, her skin far darker than her mother’s and her eyes likewise closed.

Anya let go of her hand and went bouncing over the grass to her mother and sister, dropping down onto her hands and knees beside the baby and carefully leaning in to press a kiss to her forehead. “ _Shh_ ,” she said in a theatrically loud whisper, looking up at Kol with solemn eyes, “Jaelin is sleeping.”

It was enough to rouse Ona’la from her sleep, and she saw the other woman shake her head ever so slightly as she blinked and looked around. She smiled somewhat absently at Anya, reaching down to stroke a hand down her lekku. “Careful, eya,” she said.

Realising that Ona’la hadn’t realised she was there, Kol cleared her throat awkwardly. Ona’la quite visibly started, and Anya started bouncing again instantly. “Mama, I found Kol’aya, did you know she’s my best friend?”

Trying not to look too startled at the declaration of friendship, Kol’aya said “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you all, I wish just running nearby-”

“No no, please, it’s quite alright-”

“She jumped out at me from nowhere, and I was just worried she’d wandered off from the base-”

“Oh goodness, she didn’t hurt you, did she?”

They stared at each other for a moment, both trying to talk at once and both failing dismally, before they both laughed; Kol’s laugh was perhaps a little more awkward, and Ona’la’s a little more relieved, but it was genuine nonetheless. “I’m sorry, this is all a bit of a mess,” Ona’la said sheepishly. “Should we try starting again?”

The baby- Anya had called her Jaelin- started to fuss, and Ona’la reached down instantly to pick her up, settling her in the crook of her arm as Kol’aya stopped to take a brief swig of her water bottle. “Gotta say I’m surprised to see you all out here at this hour,” she said, as she put the canteen back on her belt. “Should I be watching behind nearby trees in case the hubbie jumps out at me too?”

That would be something. She hadn’t really seen a lot of Ona’la or Thexan since coming to Odessen; she got the distinct impression that the little family had been keeping their distance up until now, and after the bizarre encounter with Arcann on Asylum, she didn’t know how she’d feel about trying to have a conversation with someone who had the same face.

But Ona’la just laughed. “I’d wager he’s still fast asleep back at the base,” she said, rubbing tiredly at her own eyes.

Kol’aya eyed her critically. “And why aren’t you, then?”

Ona’la smiled ruefully. “Anya has never been one to sleep through the night,” she said, “and Jaelin has been a little poorly lately.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Kol said, dropping to a crouch on the far end of the blanket. “Have you- I mean, have any of the medics on the base looked at her? I didn’t get a full tour of the staff, but I didn’t see any paediatricians on duty.”

“Oh, she’s alright,” Ona’la said, “just a little tummy upset, thank you for your concern, though.”

Shifting awkwardly to balance her weight more comfortably, Kol said “So, the girls weren’t sleeping, so that warranted... coming out to the middle of the forest alone?”

Ona’la laughed again; behind her, Anya was attempting to do all sorts of acrobatic tricks by herself, and was apparently already quite proficient at tumbling. Her handstands left something to be desired, though. “I imagine the appeal of the peace and quiet was what drew you out here too, Doctor Torr,” she said. “Or... forgive me, I know we didn’t end things on the best of terms on our last meeting, may I call you Kol’aya?”

_May I call you Kol’aya?_

_No, you may not._

“Of course,” she said, trying to ignore the echo in her head.

Ona’la’s smile was radiant, despite the dark circles around her eyes. “Kol’aya then,” she said. “I find the solitude out here to be quite refreshing, and Anya can be as loud as her little heart desires, without me having to worry about her disturbing others.”

“And then! And then, and then, um, Kol’aya, we go and have _tatla!_ ” Anya said excitedly, the volume of her voice rising with each word.

Kol raised her tattooed eyebrows. “You can get tatla in these parts?” she said, somewhat impressed.

Ona’la nodded. “There’s a family amongst the twi’lek settlers who have an excellent recipe,” she said. “I knew them back when I was a padawan on Tython, and they’re trying to establish something of a bakery or delicatessen here, specialising in Rylothian food.”

“I haven’t had a good tatla in, well... probably not since I left Ryloth four years ago.”

“There was a woman at the market in Pirate’s Cove who did imports-”

“Renna, that was her name?”

“That’s her! She always had some snap frozen things, and I remember she had tatla, but...” She pulled a face. “It’s never as good as fresh baked.”

Kol laughed. “Well, I mean, is it ever _really_ proper tatla if you didn’t grow the grains yourself in a pot of rycrit shit in a cave on the homeworld?” she said wryly.

Anya appeared beside her as if by magic, crawling on her hands and knees. “Rycrit shit,” she whispered gleefully, and Kol felt her stomach drop.

“Oh, uh, sweetie, uh... that’s, um, not a great word-”

“It’s fine,” Ona’la said, waving a hand to soothe over the moment. “Anya, baby, that’s a big girl word. Remember the rules about big girl words?”

Anya sighed dramatically, flopping onto her stomach on the blanket. “That I have to wait until I’m growed up to use them,” she said, the words clearly something she had memorised from the flat intonation.

Ona’la stifled a yawn with the back of her hand. “That’s right, baby, good girl,” she said. “Would you like to join us, Kol’aya?”

The invitation took her by surprise. “Oh,” she said, “well, uh-”

“Please Kol’aya?” Anya said, immediately jumping onto her knees and grabbing at her arm. “Please please please? We can have a cheese tatla and a chocolate tatla-”

“You’re only allowed to have one for breakfast, eya, or you’ll make yourself sick,” Ona’la said patiently.

Anya was all but swinging off of her arm, tugging urgently. “No, but, um, Kol’aya can have one and I can get the other one and then we’re going to share.”

Kol bit her lip to stop from laughing.

Ona’la looked at her daughter with the sort of pazaak face that Kol would have killed to have. “Did you ask Kol’aya if you could share her breakfast, or are you being greedy?”

“Mama, she’s my best friend,” Anya said, the ‘ _duh_ ’ evident even if she hadn’t spoken it aloud.

Kol couldn’t help herself- she laughed, tucking her head down quickly to try and hide it. She heard Ona’la sigh, but the sound was amused. “Alright then,” Ona’la said. “Let’s fold up the blanket like we practised and go see if the tatla are ready.” When Kol climbed to her feet and went to grab a corner of the blanket to help, Ona’la waved a hand subtly to stop her, winking ever so slightly when she looked at her for clarification.

Once both women were off the blanket, Ona’la tucking Jaelin into a sling she was wearing over her chest, Anya bounced forward and threw both of her hands into the air, sticking her tongue out the side of her mouth as a look of fierce concentration came over her face. Kol’s eyes widened as the blanket began to move of its’ own accord, the corners fluttering before the whole thing lifted a few inches off the ground. Anya gestured elaborately, flinging her arms around, and the blanket was sloppily folded once, and then twice, and then a third time, before dropping back onto the ground in a lopsided square.

She spun on her heel with a triumphant look on her face, her hands pumped into fists in the air. “I did it!” she crowed.

“You did,” Ona’la said proudly, trying to bend down awkwardly with a baby strapped to her front to pick up the blanket.

Kol stepped in instead. “I’ll get it,” she said, grabbing the cloth and tucking it under her arm.

Ona’la’s expression was one of immense appreciation as she straightened again. “Thank you,” she said, before calling out “Anya? Why don’t you run ahead and tell Matriarch Ranna that we’ll be there soon?”

“Can I play with Sao?”

“If he’s awake, eya, don’t wake him up, it’s still early for most people.” But Anya was already gone, zipping away through the trees like the little blue blur that had tackled Kol on the trail earlier. When she glanced at her, Ona’la was shaking her head ruefully. “We try to teach her to channel her energy into productive avenues, but she is a handful. I’m sorry that she disturbed you.”

Falling into step beside her, Kol shrugged. “She gave me a scare, for sure, but it’s all good,” she said. “So do you and your mister take turns out here with them, or...?”

“Thexan tends to stay up with her in the evenings, and I’m more of a morning person, so we just try to balance her between us,” she said, lips pursed for a moment. “Although, last night he and Senya were at a meeting very late into the evening, and it was stressful enough that I would have let him sleep regardless.”

“Oh?”

Ona’la glanced around briefly as they came through the trees and out to the edge of the fields, checking to make sure they were not overheard. A farmer waved to them, and Ona’la waved back, but they were not within hearing range. “Tahrin has agents on Zakuul of a rather...unsavoury nature. I met them several years ago when the Alliance was first established, and I cannot say I found them to be pleasant individuals. There was the possibility that they were going to conduct a series of bombings across The Spire, and try to break into the Overwatch security facility.”

_You know as well as I that- left to their own devices- they will fall upon one another again with rabid intent, and it will not be the men and women in the ivory citadels who suffer. It will be the common folk, the people you have always sought to aid in your medical services, who will bear the brunt of their wars._

She hid her flinch, trying not to think of the accuracy of Arcann’s prediction. “I really hope it was put to some kind of democratic vote,” she said instead.

Ona’la nodded. “The argument lasted well into the night,” she said quietly, “but eventually they gave the order to stand down. No one was hurt.”

Kol slowly breathed out a sigh of relief, a weight lifting off of her shoulders. “Thank the goddess for that,” she said.

“Indeed. I’m glad we are of the same mind.”

“Killing innocent citizens never did anything but incite more hate,” Kol said. “If they wanna prove they’ve got nothing to do with Valkorion, they can’t go following his example.”

Ona’la looked at her sharply, and Kol got the distinct impression that she’d said something significant. “I actually wanted to talk to you about... all of that,” she said, drawing slightly closer as they grew closer to the small cluster of buildings that marked the twi’lek settlement. Kol braced herself for the inevitable barrage of questions that she’d endured from everyone else these past few weeks. “I didn’t know if you’d find it intrusive or not, but I wanted to check that you were alright after everything that happened.”

Oh.

That was... huh. She hadn’t really thought about the fact that no one had asked after her since Asylum- it had just been question after question after question, some hostile and invasive, and some more polite but no less uncomfortable. She’d received the necessary medical care for her lungs to recover from the smoke inhalation, but...

She wasn’t really used to people asking after _her_ , specifically.

“I wanted to ask sooner,” Ona’la continued, apparently unaware of the turmoil going on in her head, “but Thexan and I... we didn’t want to crowd you, or upset you. He was particularly worried that maybe the, ah... family resemblance would be distressing to you.”

Kol cleared her throat, partially at a loss for words, and partially to cover up the lump in her chest that seemed to be the looming onset of tears. “That’s, um...” She swallowed hard. “That’s very considerate of you, thank you.”

“Is it too much? Should I not have asked?”

“No, no, it’s okay. It’s...” She pulled a face. “It’s hard, you know?”

“I do know. It’s alright.”

They had reached the village by now, and rounded a corner to find Anya balancing on the edge of a shallow stone fountain with another young twi’lek of a similar age. Some buildings were still closed up against the cold morning, but many more still had their shutters and doors open, with folk coming and going rugged up against the brisk chill in the air; Kol felt decidedly underdressed in her running gear, and felt a pang of misplaced homesickness as she took in the women wearing traditional lekku wraps, and the familiar crescent plaques on the wall beside each door.

“Can I ask you something?” Kol said impulsively, before she could stop herself.

Ona’la’s smile was kind, and encouraging; it was the sort of smile that made her want to trust her implicitly, the kind of smile that made her want to believe that people could be good and that life could be good. “Of course,” she said warmly, startling her when she reached down briefly and squeezed her hand. “I’m always here to talk, if you need it.”

Kol took a deep breath, already regretting her decision to say anything, but forging on regardless. “When you... when you rescued Thexan, was he an asshole?”

She half expected Ona’la to gasp, scandalised, but instead she laughed. “Don’t tell me you haven’t watched the acclaimed miniseries on Holoflix,” she said, her smile wider.

“Er... what?”

“Someone made a dramatization of our relationship a few years ago- unlicensed and unofficial of course,” Ona’la said. “Most people seem to assume Thexan will be the same brooding, unpleasant individual the series made him out to be.”

Kol couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Well now I have to watch it,” she said. “What’s it called?”

“Oh, no, don’t make me say it-”

“I’m sure if I asked back at the base, everyone would know what I’m talking about.”

The blush on Ona’la’s cheeks made her skin a robust purple colour as she squeaked out “The Jedi’s Forbidden Love: The Seduction of Prince Thexan.”

Kol’aya burst out laughing.

“But,” Ona’la went on hastily, her face bright purple, “in answer to your question, he was not... amiable, to begin with-”

“So, yes, he was an asshole?”

Ona’la sighed. “Not in as many words, no,” she said. “He had every reason to be suspicious of me, and hostile to his situation. And he had suffered greatly at the hands of Valkorion. But he was an intelligent and analytical man, not without reason.”

_I reached out to you, Doctor Torr, because I knew out of any onboard that you would be the most reasonable when faced with the grim realities of Nox’s escape._

“Reasonable doesn’t make him a good man,” she said quietly.

Anya separated from her little friend and ran towards them, and Ona’la glanced over at Kol as she approached. “It doesn’t,” she agreed, her eyes seeing far too much for her taste. “But that’s a discussion for another time, perhaps. Would you like to have dinner with us tonight, Kol’aya?”

A gasp sounded at their feet, and a little hand latched onto hers. “Are you coming to have dinner with us Kol’aya?” Anya said, her eyes impossibly wide. “I can show you my toys and my room and my bed and my drawings, do you do drawings Kol’aya? I have crayons and pencils and Daddy got me a drawing table and you use the stick and it makes the picture on the screen, and-”

“She hasn’t said yes yet, eya,” Ona’la said patiently.

She knew that the dinner invitation was undoubtedly offered in good faith, but Kol’aya couldn’t help but feel like Ona’la had planned her timing just to be on the safe side. She couldn’t very well turn down the giddily happy princess, now, could she?

But...

She didn’t really feel trapped by this one. Maybe she was just in the right mood, maybe something was different about this. “I’d love to,” she said.

And she meant it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time readers to the series may have picked up on the brief mentions of Tahrin's agents and guessed that they were Thake and Kaliyo- congratulations, you were right. Given that Kol is not the Outlander, we aren't going to see the events of some in game chapters, and this was one of them. Anarchy in Paradise (Ch 10 of KotFE) took place entirely off screen, and now nobody has to deal with Thake. Aren't we all lucky? Also five bucks to who can guess who Alauni was referring to when she said the Republic handed over 'persons of interest' to Zakuul after the Green Jedi fled. 
> 
> lek'nat- twi'leki insult, literally "without lekku". Lekku being a source of pride and ego for twi'lek (regardless of gender), which larger or multiple lekku being seen as desirable, so being without lekku is seen as inferior. On par with calling a white person "cracker"
> 
> tatla- a Rylothian bread, made from a long thin piece of dough that is folded in half and twisted into a braid, with one end being left open to go crispy. Again, symbolic of lekku. Can be sweet or savoury, often baked with jam or cheese fillings


	7. Chapter 7

_Palace of the Eternal Dragon, Zakuul, Wild Space  
That same week_

The early evening starlight was far brighter in his personal chambers than it had been in the palace common areas down below; Arcann was quite fond of the extraordinary view, and not just because of how impressive and intimidating it was to any consorts he invited back to his bed. There was a peacefulness to it, a beautiful serenity, sitting and watching the stars brighten the purple sky, watching the lights of The Spire below bursting into glorious life against the darkness.

It was immensely appreciated, after the day he’d had.

In an effort to put on a brave face after the Outlander’s escape, the social calendar in The Spire was continuing as per usual, complete with galas and festivals and gladiatorial championships. Just that afternoon, he’d attended a Battle Royale, where the newest class of Knights were pitted against one another for the glory and privilege of entering the Exarch Program. With the number of unfortunate losses in the last few years at the hands of the Wrath and her wretched Alliance, there was great prestige to be had in earning a place as one of the most powerful generals and warlords under his rule.

Normally, it wasn’t a requirement to fight to the death to earn a place- this wasn’t the savage Sith Empire, after all. But he was feeling particularly brittle after the continued failures that had allowed the Outlander’s escape in the first place, and so the competitors were only allowed to leave the arena once their opponent was dead. After all, he had killed Thexan, and it had made him stronger. It had made him Emperor.

The survivors would be like him. They would understand the cost of failure, and the crushing weight of their victory.

An ideal army.

He’d sat in the royal viewing box for a good part of the day, hosting an array of Zakuul’s most rich and powerful while the bloodbath took place below them in the arena. He couldn’t really remember a great deal about any of the fights, or being at all moved by any of the battles- hopefully Vaylin had been paying better attention than he had, given that the Exarch program was her pride and joy these days. His thoughts had been scattered and distracted, as they had been ever since Darth Nox’s escape, and it had only occurred to him late in the afternoon that he probably needed to pick a consort for the evening.

The thought filled him with the same sort of uneasiness that had intruded on his last sexual encounter, a vague sort of repulsion and self-loathing that confused and frustrated him in equal measure. He’d always found some kind of solace in sex the last few years, a sanctuary where he was unquestionably powerful and irresistibly desirable, where his failures were forgotten and his disabilities went unnoticed. Taking someone back to the privacy of his quarters, the whole charade of flirting and talking as the prelude to fucking- where his chosen inevitably tried to slide past whatever boundaries he had in place, to try and worm their way into his affections and earn a coveted spot as an official consort or spouse... the mockery of it all felt far more vindictive now. He had never cared before what the person in his bed actually thought about him, because he was Emperor and he was a conqueror and he was untouchable.

That was before... everything. Before Nox had escaped, taunting him even as he’d tried to kill her. Before his father’s ghost had appeared to mock him.

Before a woman so insignificant in the grand schemes of things that she shouldn’t even have registered on his periphery stood up to him, and spoke to him like they were equals. Before she’d used his name like she was allowed to speak to him.

Before she’d tried to save his life.

Kol’aya didn’t matter- she _didn’t_. And it was frustrating beyond all measure how he kept finding his thoughts drifting back to her, as if she was at all relevant to the situation. He needed to be focusing on Nox, he needed to be focusing on the Alliance, he needed to be focusing on-

The woman in his bedchambers whose name he couldn’t even remember right now.

She was taking her time in the refresher, and he was sitting on the end of the bed in a silk robe, trying to think of why he’d thought he could handle having someone in his bed tonight. He fiddled with the tie as it hung loose between his knees, listening to the water running in the room beyond. She was certainly attractive, he had certainly been interested enough to offer the invitation in the first place- long dark hair and smokey grey eyes, artfully applied cosmetics and a shimmering gold dress with striking lines that drew attention to her gracefully long legs. They’d been introduced earlier in the afternoon, he knew that much, but clearly her name hadn’t held any sort of thrall over him.

_Not like Kol’aya._

He scowled to himself and lurched to his feet, tucking the robe around himself almost forcefully. If she was going to waste time primping herself in the refresher, then he wasn’t going to wait for her. He’d find something to watch to enjoy himself in the meantime, and if he was done before she was ready, well, that was her own fault.

His living quarters had a rather impressive personal theatre installed, and he slumped down on the lounge, reaching for the control panel in the arm of the couch. The screen buzzed to life, and while he had meant to turn it to something of a more adult nature, it instead started playing at the point he had last paused it.

“-talk about what it means to have a moral obligation to our fellow citizens,” Kol’aya said, her image appearing before him as he froze at the sound of her voice. She was several years younger here than when he had met her on Asylum, her makeup far more striking, and she had swapped out the mini-skirt for tight leather pants. She looked smartly professional, but he wouldn’t have looked twice at her if she hadn’t gotten twisted up in this mess with the Alliance. “Because it’s inevitable that, when we’re here to celebrate humanitarian efforts and achievements, we’re going to talk about how that translates into direct action.”

She’d won the Raza Foundation’s highest award seven years earlier for her work with refugee communities in the aftermath of the Cold War igniting into outright war once more. He’d mentioned that to her, told her he knew about it, and she’d been quite obviously touched that he had bothered to learn so much about her- regardless of how much she’d attempted to deny it, the moment had been there. It had meant something to her, that someone knew that much about her.

So, the obvious thing to do when getting to know one’s enemy was of course to investigate further, and he’d found in the days after Asylum that the ceremony where she’d been awarded had been filmed. More interestingly, she’d given a rather extensive speech during the ceremony, more of a lecture really, and if he needed to understand the inner workings of her mind so that he could outwit her in their next encounter- what better place to start?

“Your Majesty?”

He jumped at the touch of a hand on his shoulder, forgetting until that moment the woman awaiting him in his bedroom. He hadn’t even heard her come up behind him, and he cursed himself for the lapse; she ran the hand along the back of her shoulder and neck, coming to rest on the far shoulder as if she was hugging him from behind the couch. “I’m sorry for keeping you waiting,” she said breathlessly, her lips hovering close to his temple.

He fought the urge to flinch back from her touch, instead very pointedly rolling his shoulder to shake her hand loose. He said nothing, and instead turned his attention back to the image of Kol’aya as she continued with her acceptance speech; his consort seemed at a loss as to what to make of this, but after a moment she sauntered elegantly around the curve of the couch, draped in a matching silk robe as she came to seat herself close beside him.

He shuffled an inch or two further down the couch.

“Now, _obligation_ is a bit of a funny word,” Kol’aya was saying, gesturing as she spoke; he was fascinated by the way she talked with her hands. “ _Obligation_ seems to rub folk the wrong way, I find, like they’re being coerced against their will, and I think that says a lot more about them than the morality of any such situation.”

The woman at his side sighed loudly, her feet tucked up delicately on the couch beneath her and her hair carefully sleep-tousled in a manner that was very obviously styled in the bathroom secretly before she’d come to find him. He almost jumped when he felt her hand slide over his thigh, rubbing casually at the place just inside his knee. “You should come back to bed,” she said, a pout in her voice.

He ignored her.

“Obviously what I’m talking about here- a moral obligation to our fellow galactic citizens- has no relevance in a legal setting. If it was, we wouldn’t be watching one galactic power sell living, breathing people to a second galactic power as slaves, in order for both to retain their economic stranglehold over their respective regions.” She brought her hands back to the middle, briefly holding one hand with the other before continuing, as if supporting an old injury. “Slavery, of course, is the one extreme example that inevitably comes up in these discussions, and it’s an painful reality for quite literally billions of individuals across the galaxy, and one would hope that any philosophical discussion on morality would roundly condemn slavery as an absolute bare minimum, along with murder or rape and the like.”

“This is very boring,” the woman beside him said pointedly.

“Quiet,” he growled, removing her hand from his leg. She huffed a grumpy sigh, crossing her arms as she sulked in silence.

“So what precisely are we talking about when we use the phrase ‘ _moral obligation_ ’?” she asked, spreading her hands wide as if to indicate to the audience that she was asking them for their input. “Why are we obligated to help anyone, in a galaxy consumed by war and greed and corruption, where some folk have god-like powers and others have unfathomable amounts of money while the rest of us are lucky to just have the clothes on our back?” She shrugged. “Why not simply look out for ourselves, and turn a blind eye to everyone else? There’s no law to say we _have_ to help, no reason for us to spend our own energy and time and risk our own safety, so why do it?”

His consort sighed again and climbed to her feet, all but flouncing off back to the bedroom. He was relieved to have her gone, quite frankly.

“It’s the sort of thing that philosophers have debated back and forth for centuries, this notion of a moral obligation- but I’m not here to give a lecture on moral relativism today, which I’m sure you’re all disappointed about.” She grinned as a smattering of laughter ran through the audience, and he frowned, reaching for his datapad to search for what in the swampy hell could be funny about that- or even what it was. Philosophy had never been a field his studies had ever focused on, but if it would help him to better understand his enemy... “Oh, we have a few fans of moral relativism in the house today, huh? Normative or descriptive?” Someone shouted something incomprehensible in the recording, and she winced. "Oh, meta-ethical? My sympathies."

She laughed, as the audience laughed again, and he wanted to understand the joke so that he could laugh too. She smiled, and waved off any further input from the crowd. “I think the fact that most of you are here for this ceremony in the first place indicates that we all have a fairly similar understanding of our duties as galactic citizens.”

A loud and provocative moan came from the direction of the bedroom, pointedly sexual. Instead of finding it intriguing, he just wanted to snarl at her to shut up- he’d clearly indicated to her that he didn’t desire any form of sexual conduct right now, and yet she persisted?

“For most sentient species, our time in this galaxy is limited to one, maybe two centuries at absolute most,” Kol’aya continued. “And for most of us, there’s a great drive to create, to cultivate, to conquer- to do _something_ that leaves our undeniable mark on the stars, that imprints our legacy for time immemorial. Pride, after all, is hardly a character trait monopolised by the Sith, now, is it?”

The comment drew another round of laughter from the audience, and Arcann found the corner of his mouth twitching as well. She had a very dry sense of humour, he was coming to learn, not the sort that made you howl with laughter, but certainly the type that made you want to grin in response as a subtle quip landed without fanfare.

“We want to be remembered, and I’d be lying if I said that there wasn’t an element of pride that had driven me to where I am today,” she said. “But we cannot let pride be our defining feature- not in a time where pride carves out empires, or when pride is responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of innocents.”

He winced.

“Pride cannot allow us to remain stagnant or aloof, in a time when what is most needed is compassion and courage,” she continued, her expression more solemn now. “Now, I’m not a philosopher, and I’m sure there’s going to be people out there in the audience today who disagree with me on the incidental aspects of my arguments, but to me, compassion and courage are not innate character traits that we are born with, no more than pride is.”

Arcann found he was holding his breath, and he forced himself to start again with some difficulty.

Kol’aya, seven years in the past and unaware of his dilemma, continued on without pausing. “I am not up here because I am an innately good person,” she said, her hands clasped before her again. “In fact, I think there are days where I am downright atrocious, if I’m being honest with myself. I am up here, in your glorious company today, because every day I am faced with a choice, and every day I _choose_ to take the path of compassion, and every day I _choose_ to take the hard path, which other people seem to think makes me courageous.” She shrugged. “I’ve heard just as many people call it ‘ _stubborn_ ’ though, so it’s all perspective, I’d say.”

It wasn’t as easy as that... was it? No, she had no idea what she was talking about, she had _no idea_ the sorts of things he’d gone through. As if he’d ever had a _choice_ as to how to survive his father’s brutality- hah! He’d chosen survival, if there was ever a choice to be made, and that didn’t leave room for things like compassion.

What did she even know, anyway?

“We have the ability to enact great change in the galaxy, each and every one of us,” Kol’aya was saying as he climbed to his feet again. “It doesn't require great power or wealth- it just requires determination, and the conscious effort of waking up each day and saying ‘ _today I will do good_ ’.”

He stormed into the bedroom and found the woman splayed out on the bed, naked as she pleasured herself; her eyes lit up as he approached the bed, discarding his robes, and if she was disappointed that he did not remove his mask, she did not voice it aloud.

She knew better than to question him.

Unlike certain other people.

* * *

_Alliance Private Tenements Sector, Odessen, Wild Space_

“Oh no,” Kol said, doing her best to keep a straight face, “I know better than to question that.”

In front of her, three little faces adopted matching expressions of utter crestfallen disappointment, their lekku all but wilting. “But _Kol’aya_ ,” Anya started to say, the whining drawl of the syllables stretched out far beyond reason in the manner of small children attempting to wheedle something out of an adult.

“Eya,” Ona’la said firmly as she re-entered the room. “Your aunties and I said no. Please don’t try to get Kol’aya into trouble.”

“Poysee, why don’t you show Anya and Sao the slime we brought over?” Ce’na said, from where she was lounging on the other couch with a half-eaten muffin in her hand. “We put it in the playroom for later, but maybe later is now, hey?”

The three little twi’leks- one blue, one pink, and one yellowish-green- all dashed off without further prompting, and Kol hid a laugh behind a hand. She wasn’t the only one, because Ona’la looked fondly exasperated as she set down a tray of drinks, and Ce’na openly cackled. “They are gonna need a bath in twenty minutes real bad,” she said delightedly.

Ranna, the surprisingly youthful matriarch of the twi’lek community, was the only one of the four of them who looked a little distressed. “Slime?” she asked awkwardly, looking up from where she was cooing quietly to baby Jaelin in her arms.

“It’s this thing that all the kids love at the moment,” Ce’na explained, swinging her legs off the couch as Ona’la sat down. “Jaesa looked up the recipe, because all her students were talking about it. They had a, uh... let’s call it a science lesson, and the Force enclave was a bit sticky afterwards.”

“Oh, is that what that was about,” Ona’la said, settling in against the cushions with her mug held between her hands. “I heard Darth Hexid swearing a red streak about something on her robes, I’m assuming she must have been an unfortunate casualty.”

“It’s not dangerous, is it?” Ranna asked, sitting up straighter as if she was going to climb to her feet and go after her son.

Ce’na waved a hand almost flippantly. “Nah. It’s just glue and some dye and water and a little borax, we just made it in the kitchen last night. _As long as they don’t eat it_ ,” she said loudly over her shoulder.

“We won’t, Le’le,” Poysee called from the next room.

“Good girl,’ Ce’na called back.

Ona’la looked across the small table laden with snack food towards Kol’aya. “Thank you for that, by the way,” she said, not exactly quietly, but certainly at a volume that was clear that she didn’t want to be overheard by the children. “I don’t know where Anya got it into her head that it would be fun to watch a real surgical procedure-”

“Girl’s got an enquiring mind, that’s a good thing.”

Around a mouthful of muffin, Ce’na said “Poysee does _not_ , however. Baby girl cries when she finds dead moths on her windowsill. Don’t know why she was so keen on the idea.”

“Oh, you know what kids are like when they group up like that, that little pack mentality,” Ona’la said.

Ranna giggled. “Sao would just about play on the cliffside if Anya asked him to,” she said fondly. “I don’t actually think he’s capable of saying no to her.”

Ona’la looked exasperated. “She’s such a little menace, I’m so sorry.”

Kol’aya wasn’t sure what to add to the conversation, so she covered her awkwardness by stuffing a stuffed date in her mouth. When Ona’la had invited her to these twice weekly morning teas, she’d been hesitant to accept- she’d never been the caf and cake type, and her difficulty in letting her guard down long enough to make friends meant that she wasn’t exactly drowning in invitations anyway. Furthermore, it was painfully apparent that it was a group for twi’lek mothers, and as much as she was fiercely protective of making sure the children in her vicinity lived as painless a life as possible, she wouldn’t really call herself a kid person.

Maybe it was the loneliness that prompted her to accept, or maybe it was Anya’s relentless enthusiasm for the idea once she’d found out Kol’aya had an invitation- whatever the case, she found herself spending two mornings a week with one of the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy, the Rylothian Minister for Culture, and one of the youngest Clan Matriarchs in recent history. It was an eclectic gathering, to be sure, and there was a part of her that was ruthlessly smug at being a part of a group of such influential twi’lek women.

She still felt a little out of place, though.

But, with nothing better to do with her time given that the Alliance leadership was still politely declining to discuss her growing need to leave, she might as well grow to appreciate caf and cake and gossip. Or whatever it was one did at these social gatherings- so far, it just seemed to be an ongoing exercise in disaster prevention concerning small children and their propensity for mayhem.

Case in point- playing with actual slime and shrieking like little banshees, on top of trying to weasel their way into watching a live surgery.

Thank the goddess she hadn’t ever had children.

“Kol’aya?”

She shook herself. “Hmm, sorry? I spaced out a little there for a minute.”

Ranna smiled a little awkwardly at her; she got the impression the young woman wasn’t particularly adept at social interactions, despite her leadership role. “I don’t mean to impose on you at all, but Ona’la has been telling me that you’ve been looking for things to do. We’ve healers of our own, but our only trained doctor was killed when the Sith invaded Tython years ago- so I was wondering, would you come and spend some time with us, maybe train a few of my people?”

Kol’aya blinked.

“Only if you wanted to, of course,” Ranna rushed on to say. “I just- she told me you used to be a teacher as well as a doctor, and we get by well enough, but it might be nice if I had someone else on my side to help convince some of the men not to drink toxic brews they find in hostile camps...”

“Oh, _no_ ,” Ona’la said, pressing her hands to her cheeks, “they aren’t still _doing_ that, are they?”

Ranna grimaced and nodded. “Vederiat was the one keeping them in line mostly, and when she died, they got a little silly again,” she said quietly. “There was a lot of anger and frustration after the Sith attacks, a sense that the Republic and the Jedi saw us as disposable, and for a lot of the young men, they were desperate to find some kind of magical cure-all, something to make them invincible.”

“Goddess,” Kol said with wince. “Okay, not that I’m not painfully familiar with that sense of rage and helplessness, but _fuck_ \- what is it with men and wanting to prove their superior machismo by doing dumb fucking shit like drinking poison?”

Ona’la made a quieting gesture. “Ah, Kol’aya? Just, ah- careful with the cussing? Anya is like a little parrot at the moment, she’s repeating everything she hears.”

Kol felt the ends of her lekku curl up in mortification. “Oh, uh- sure. Sorry about that.”

“No, no it’s fine!” Ona’la said immediately, as if sensing that she’d upset her. “Please, it’s honestly fine, I don’t want you to feel bad-”

“I don’t feel bad,” she lied. She turned to face Ranna on the couch beside her. “So, what were you thinking, like, basic first aid? Do you have anyone sort of in charge of the village’s medical needs?”

Ranna began to list off the facilities they had on hand, and Kol began to question her in turn; on the couch opposite them, Ona’la and Ce’na slowly turned towards one another, their conversation seemingly about Ce’na’s wife Jaesa. She wondered privately how much of what was said here remained between the four of them, or if the Lord Wrath received updates about her. Ysaine’s stories about Tahrin had never made her out to be so brutally formal, and instead had made her cold demeanour out to be almost comically awkward; did she realise just how much she took for granted in her interactions with the woman?

Ysaine had faced off against Sith and Jedi alike- she’d even killed a few, despite her preference for non-lethal bounty targets. It made a huge difference, being able to deal with a Force-user and know that you had a good chance of making a dent in their self-righteous armour. And Ysaine had the benefit of looking at the Lord Wrath and seeing the mother of her niece and nephew, not the dead Emperor’s personal assassin.

“Kol’aya?”

She shook herself more ferociously this time, angry at herself for zoning out again so soon in the conversation. “I’m sorry, Ranna,” she said, trying to smile apologetically.

Ranna had passed Jaelin back to Ona’la at some point, and she clasped her hands together in her lap as if she was perpetually nervous. “It’s alright,” she said awkwardly. “If you aren’t interested...?”

The door hissed open in the other room, and Ona’la and Jaelin both brightened instantly; from the children’s playroom, there was a loud thud, followed by a bellow that made Kol wince. “ _Daddy!_ ”

As if they’d timed it, Prince Thexan stepped into the room at the same time that Anya came surging from the playroom, leaping for his arms; he didn’t even flinch, but caught her expertly, as if he was well practiced at the manoeuvre by now. She wrapped her arms around his neck in a fiercely tight hug, immediately smothering the side of his face in kisses while he grinned and closed his eye against the assault.

It wasn’t the first time she’d seen him since Asylum, and had to deal with the way her stomach had flipped having to stare at Arcann’s identical twin, but the way he scrunched up the left side of his face, his brow creased as he pulled a face at his daughter... something about it hit a little harder than before. Along with the stress of trying to fit in with a goddamn mother’s group- however well intentioned Ona’la was to invite her, it was still a rather large step for her- it was just a bit much.

While the others were distracted with his entrance, she turned back to Ranna. “I’m absolutely interested, and I’d love to come out later this afternoon, or tomorrow, if you have time?” She made an apologetic face. “My head just isn’t quite with me this morning, I’m afraid.”

Ranna made a sympathetic sound, a hand on her chest; if she had to make a guess, she’d wager the woman had some kind of anxiety of her own, and appealing to that side of things had won her a point. “Of course,” she said, “we can put it off until tomorrow, if that would be easier for you?”

She smiled, letting her relief shine through. “That’d be great,” she said, climbing to her feet.

Over by the doorway, Ona’la had crossed over to greet her husband, and Kol’aya caught a portion of the conversation as she tried to casually walk past them. “Admiral Aygo said we might be getting more Republic reinforcements,” Ona’la was saying, while trying to juggle Jaelin and Anya between the two of them.

“Kylaena and Tahrin said as much in the meeting, yes,” Thexan said, and even his goddamn voice was too similar. He didn’t have the robotic drawl that Arcann had, the filtered mask muffling some of the natural cadence of his voice, but it was close enough. “They want to make use of mother’s information about the treasury fleets, and some of the people arriving tomorrow are SIS slicers.”

“Oh, does Theron know them?”

“Yes, they seemed to be friends of his- one of them has some experience with financial espionage, apparently, something about the Nar Shaddaa banking sector?”

Ona’la’s laughter followed her out into the hallway. “Oh no, Theron wouldn’t like that.”

The door closed behind her, blocking out the sounds of pleasant conversation, and Kol breathed a sigh of relief. She felt monstrous, like some kind of miserable, antisocial wretch, but all of that happiness and all of that casual love and all of that motherly bonding between the other women... goddess, what was wrong with her? Why was she so bad at just... being friendly with people? They were just trying to be friendly, trying to be nice, so why was it that she couldn’t stand to play at it for more than an hour or so?

She started to set off down the corridor, hands stuffed into her jacket pockets and her head low; maybe she could just lock herself in her room for the afternoon and work on some kind of lesson plan for Ranna’s people. Maybe she could just lock herself away altogether, save the Alliance the trouble of having to keep someone on hand to monitor her-

“Kol’aya?”

She glanced over her shoulder to see Thexan jogging up behind her, slowing to a halt as he saw she was waiting for him. He looked genuinely concerned, and it made something in her gut twist. “I’m sorry, you left so quickly- I haven’t upset you, have I?”

She tried to force a smile. “Not at all, but thanks for checking. That’s very kind of you.”

“Ona’la was just worried you were hurt, and Anya got upset that she didn’t get to say goodbye.”

Fucking great, now she’d upset the whole sunshine family. Now there were going to be less rainbows around the base, and everyone would blame her. “It’s nothing,” she lied. “I just felt like-”

_Like I’d overstayed my welcome._

“-like I needed some down time,” she finished. “You understand?”

His expression was solemn, but there was something in his eyes, something... piercing. Like he could see through all of her dumb lies and see the asshole she was underneath, running away from his family because they exhausted her. At least he and Arcann had different eyes. Small mercies.

Finally, he nodded. “I understand,” he said quietly. “Although, while I’ve got you...”

“Fire away.’

He paused, as if collecting his words. “I am not my brother,” he said, and she only just stopped herself from cursing; fucking Force-users, surely she’d be able to feel it if people went rifling through her thoughts, right? Or was she just that fucking transparent? “I know we haven’t really had an opportunity to talk about what happened on Asylum-”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, not you too,” she said, putting a hand up to her forehead.

“No, please, Kol’aya,” he said quickly, reaching out and putting a hand on her arm. “I know... I know the way the Alliance council talked to you wasn’t very respectful, and I know you’ve been treated abysmally for all the help you’ve given us-”

“You can say that again.”

“I just want you to know, I’m not Arcann,” he said, as if it wasn’t obvious. “I’m not... our paths diverged a long time ago, and the man I knew before is gone. I know he frightened you, but I don’t want you to think that I’m going to take his side in these things, or lash out like he does. I want you to think of me as your friend, Kol’aya.”

She stared at him, trying and failing to not compare it to Arcann’s wheedling attempts to coerce her in the Scion’s sanctuary. “You think there’s gonna be a point where you’re gonna have input in his opinions again?” she said stiltedly. “Ona’la has been pretty adamant that he can be saved.”

He looked pained for a moment. “Ona’la... believes. In everyone, that’s what she does.” His mouth twisted, an approximation of a smile. “It’s why I love her,” he said quietly. “But I know my brother, and the man on the throne is not my brother anymore.”

There was a jarring parallel trying to make itself known in her heart, and she licked her lips as she fought to keep painful old wounds from breaking open. “Sometimes family are capable of doing pretty despicable things,” she said, just as quietly. She took a shaky breath. “It doesn’t mean the person they were before ceased to exist. It just means they’ve picked the path most convenient for them.”

“You don’t need to remind me of that,” he said. “My father wants to consume all life in the galaxy, if you’ll recall.”

“He must have been a real blast at parties.”

He laughed quietly, bowing his head; when she went to move away, he didn’t stop her, or tighten his grip on her arm. He let her go, and she started to walk away.

“Kol’aya?”

She looked back. His expression was haunted, like he was regretting even calling out to her. “Yes?” she said.

Thexan swallowed several times, as if he was struggling to get the words past his lips. “Ona’la,” he said, “is she right?”

_Can Arcann be saved?_

The question hit her hard, like a steel bar slamming into her chest; she took a step back without meaning to, and she was aware that she let out a small noise, shocked and surprised. Thexan didn’t say anything, just stared at her.

She hadn’t told anyone.

She had intended to take it with her to her grave.

She opened her mouth. “He saved my life,” she whispered.

Thexan didn’t say anything, and his expression didn’t change. He nodded to her, and silently turned and retreated back down the corridor to his family’s rooms. The sound of the lock engaging knocked her out of her dazed state, and she very much found that she did not want to be alone anymore.

Changing the direction of her steps, she headed towards the cantina. This was a military base, plenty of people- even at this hour of the day, surely there would be a decent crowd in the cantina. She could drink. She could dance. Maybe find someone to fuck for an hour or two.

She could forget.

_Why did you save me?_

* * *

_Alliance Cantina, Odessen, Wild Space_

Navin paced anxiously in the shadows of the cantina entrance, just out of immediate site of the landing pads; at this hour of the morning, the breakfast crowds had come and gone, and the lunch rush hadn’t started yet, so he was able to stress in relative peace. He was supposed to be meeting with Grandmaster Shan shortly, and the few other surviving members of the High Council who had survived the Zakuulan Purges and made their way here to Odessen, but he instead found himself here. Hiding nervously around a corner as he waited for an incoming shuttle due sometime in the next ten minutes or so. He probably wasn’t even supposed to know about the incoming shuttle, but had overheard Master Dawnstar mention it to the Lord Wrath when organising a place in their schedule for the Jedi Council to meet.

The shuttle held something of a reckoning for him, as far as he could understand it- a prominent defection from the Republic that Saresh wouldn’t be able to cover up, in much the same manner that they hadn’t been able to cover up the escape of the Green Jedi. This defection, however, was a direct result of his own foolishness on Corellia, when he’d blindly overreacted and killed Knight Captain Serren- because the occupants of the shuttle were none other than the famed Havoc Squad, led by his brother-in-law Major Aric Jorgan.

It wasn’t hot, but Navin was sweating, and he wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve for what felt like the twentieth time. There were no shuttles visible against the pale blue of the sky, not yet, and each agonising second felt like it stretched for a thousand years.

“What are we hiding from?” came a comically loud whisper next to his head, and Navin yelped, flailing wildly; his elbow connected with something, and he heard a loud grunt even as the sharp pang from the impact seared up his arm to his shoulder.

He spun around to find Koth standing beside him, wincing as he pressed a hand to his ribs; his heart sank. “Oh- stars, I didn’t- I didn’t realise- you crept up so quietly!”

“I know, I know, too light on my feet. Should’ve been a dancer, huh?” Koth said, rubbing awkwardly at his side.

The thought of Koth as a dancer- perhaps shirtless, in skintight leggings- was enough to make his head spin, and he put a hand to the wall to steady himself.

“You doing alright there, bud?”

He managed a weak smile, but his heart wasn’t in it. “I’ve had better days,” he admitted, and at that moment he heard the telltale sound of a shuttle breaking atmo, the roar of the engines as the controlled descent began making him wince. “Much, much better days.”

Koth leaned around the doorway and peered out up into the sky, tracking the approach of the shuttle with a hand held up to shade his eyes. “I take it we’re hiding from the shuttle,” he said, amusement in his voice.

Navin closed his eyes. “You could say that.”

“Oh, I get it, it’s a sentient shuttle, like Bejah thinks the Gravestone is. Lemme guess- you owe it money?”

Despite the sour taste of fear curdling in his stomach, Navin found himself fighting off a smile.

“Ooh, a grin, I’m close- don’t tell me, don’t tell me, I’ll get it.” Koth snapped his fingers, as if unveiling some grand revelation. “The shuttle stole your girl, and now it’s awkward during the holidays.”

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop himself. “I’ve never had a girl before,” he said, and immediately wanted to kick himself.

“Hey man, that’s cool- you Jedi do that celibacy thing sometimes, yeah? Whatever works for you.”

“No, it’s not-” He bit his tongue. “Not _women_.”

There was a beat of silence, and then- “Ohhh,” Koth said, a somewhat sheepish note in the sound. He cleared his throat, and then in a significantly deeper voice said “Shuttle steal your boy, huh?”

He couldn’t help it- he burst out laughing. When he opened his eyes, Koth was grinning ear to ear, one hand on the wall beside him. “My brother-in-law and my niece are on the shuttle,” he said, and whatever spirits Koth’s teasing had raised- he didn’t dare call it flirting- immediately wilted again. “I’m... I’m not exactly looking forward to seeing them.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Koth said quietly, the smile slowly fading from his face. “Y’all got bad blood going on, or something?”

The roar of the engines echoed through the canyons as it came in to land on the shuttle pad, and Navin watched as several members of the Alliance council emerged from the elevator that led down to the war room, heading over to the ramp to great the newcomers as they disembarked. “Something like that,” he said, feeling that nauseous feeling in his belly amplify.

He felt Koth step in close behind him, peering over his shoulder to watch the passengers walk up the ramp towards the council. Aric walked at the front of the group, wearing the sort of discreet camo without Republic insignia that was probably meant to look less intimidating, like they were just a mercenary group and not one of the most famed black ops squads in the whole galaxy; the steely look in his eyes and the ramrod stiff angle of his shoulders ruined any attempt to look discreet. A step behind him, but ahead of the rest of the Havoc soldiers, was Ellaz’s daughter Jaiya and her husband Jonas, the two of them sombre-faced and clinging tightly to one another’s hands.

The Lord Wrath and Master Dawnstar stepped forward to great them, and Navin couldn’t stand to watch anymore; he ducked back around the corner and into the dark of the cantina entrance, suddenly desperate to breathe and finding himself unable to recall how to do it.

“Hey! Hey, hey, easy,” Koth said, jogging after him and putting a hand between his shoulder blades. “Come on, now, hyperventilating ain’t gonna fix anything, now, is it?”

“It might,” Navin said hoarsely.

Koth took hold of his arm, his fingers warm as they wrapped around his bicep. “Come on, let’s sit you down, maybe get a drink into you,” he said, guiding him towards an empty table in the cantina proper. “If there’s one thing I know about family, it’s that it’s not worth losing sleep over if you go your own way. It’s too easy to just-”

“I’m the one who did the wrong thing, Captain,” he blurted out, unable to keep it inside him any longer. “I’m the- I’m the one in the wrong. They probably hate me, and honestly, they’ve got every reason to.”

There was a moment of silence as Koth stood beside him, before he slowly released his arm. “Wait here,” he said quietly, moving over to the bar and waving to the nautolan on duty as he leaned over the top of the counter and reached underneath, helping himself to a bottle and two shot glasses. He came back to the table without saying a word, sitting down beside him and pulling open the bottle with his teeth. He poured out a decent amount into each glass, sliding one across to him.

Navin started to protest. “It’s early, I shouldn’t-”

“A toast to family,” Koth said determinedly, picking it up and handing it to him instead. Their fingers brushed as he took the shot glass. “Because if nothing else is gonna go right in this damned galaxy, might as well enjoy a drink on the way.”

Somewhat reluctantly, Navin took the drink at the same time that Koth did; he drank it perhaps a little slower than was intended with this sort of beverage, but he wasn’t a young man anymore. Throwing back shots of whiskey and vodka was not the sort of thing he could just do on a whim without suffering the consequences later on. He cleared his throat somewhat awkwardly, swallowing down the urge to cough.

Koth smacked his lips appreciatively, and Navin did his best not to stare at his mouth. “So,” Koth said, with the most painfully forced casual tone, “you wanna talk about it?”

Navin laughed. “Captain-”

“Koth.”

“Koth,” he corrected, trying to ignore the heat in his face. It was just the alcohol. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do-”

“What, chat up a handsome older man under the pretense of whining about our families?”

Navin’s mouth hung open, the words half-formed on his tongue. Koth, for his part, just grinned roguishly and poured another measure of spirits into both of their glasses. “Thought you Jedi folk were all supposed to be kind and benevolent and self-sacrificing,” he said, as if he hadn’t just propositioned him in the middle of a cantina in the middle of the day. “What in Tyth’s fiery balls could you have possibly done to piss off your family that bad?”

Almost numbly, Navin picked up the glass and drank it, only coughing a little this time. “You met my sister on Corellia,” he said.

“Your sister? Oh, the colonel. Yeah, there’s a thought, she’s not here but her kid and her hubby are?”

Navin stared down into the empty shot glass. “We don’t even know if she’s still alive,” he said, the words flat and hollow. “And my father... he’s not a young man, he won’t survive Zakuulan imprisonment or torture, if he wasn’t killed immediately.”

There was a stunned silence, and he couldn’t bring himself to look up and see the inevitable disgust and repulsion in Koth’s face. “Oh man,” Koth said weakly, finally. “Gods, I’m so sorry for you all.”

“I asked them for help- begged them, really. I couldn’t let Zakuul-” He bit off his words when he realised that he was still talking to a Zakuulan, no matter that Koth was disillusioned with the current political climate. “I couldn’t let anything happen to the children under my care,” he said, quieter now. “I lost so much during the Sith invasion- we lost so much- and I never wanted to be a leader, but I- I was all that was left-”

“Hey, hey,” Koth said, putting a hand over his where it rested on the table; his eyes were earnest and solemn when he looked up at him. “No judgement here, okay? I get how it can be.”

Navin nodded, swallowing down the worst of his babbling. “There was an incident,” he began, but then decided to just get it over and done with. “I killed a Knight-Captain.”

Koth, with the shot glass raised to his lips, spluttered and choked abruptly, slapping his hand on his chest a few times to clear it. “Ho boy, did not see that one coming,” he rasped, clearing his throat a few times and coughing into his hand. “I mean, no offense, you’re, uh...” He gestured to him, as if that would explain his thought process, and Navin couldn’t help but blurt out the first thing that came to mind.

“A big boy?”

“Damn it, was really hoping you wouldn’t remember that,” Koth said, shaking his head. “I mean, I’m sure you’re formidable in a fight and all- Lana wouldn’t’ve let you come along on the mission if she didn’t think as much- but... a Knight-Captain? Really?”

He didn’t know whether to be insulted or relieved. “Yes, a Knight-Captain,” he said. “He threatened the children of my order, and I... I lashed out. And in my desperation to cover my crime and get the children to safety, I compromised the safety of my family.”

Koth didn’t say anything, and Navin tried to tell himself it was not necessarily a judgement of him. It was a hard truth to hear, after all. “We Jedi are supposed to be free of our attachments,” he said, voice hoarse. “Well, I was so free from my attachments that it probably got my father and sister killed. I suppose I’m leading the ideal Jedi life right now.”

“Hey, Uncle Nav.”

He felt his stomach sink down like a stone, and he bowed his head even as Koth spun in his seat to face the young woman behind them. Her voice was flat, hollow, just like his was, and he knew that if he turned to look at her, her face would be the same. Eyes empty and angry, expression cold and blank.

“Uh, hey there,” Koth said, trying to turn his unflappable charm towards his niece, “it’s real nice to meet you-”

“Aren’t even gonna look at me, Uncle?”

“Jaiya,” Jonas scolded tiredly, from a step or two further back.

Steeling himself, Navin blinked quickly to try and clear the burning in his eyes, taking a deep breath as he turned to face the newcomers. Jaiya stood behind him, her expression just as he knew it would be, her arms folded over her chest and her stance wide- Force, she had so much of her mother in her, even if Ellaz had dumped her with the family and run when she was only a week old. The way she held herself, the flat hostility radiating from her while she moved with a bizarre air of calm about her, like a storm gathering strength off the coast- it was all Ellaz.

“Jaiya,” he managed at last, nodding to her and then to the man standing behind her. “Jonas.”

Jonas nodded in return, his own expression one of a man who had slept very little in the past few weeks. “Hey, Navin- uh, Master Hervoz?”

“Don’t call him that,” Jaiya said, not breaking eye contact with him.

Navin felt like pieces of him were flaking away from the inside, like a crumbling ruin slowly collapsing under its’ own weight and age. “Jaiya, what are you even doing here?”

She lifted her chin. “We found out that Aric had been in contact with the Alliance, and we wanted in.”

“Jaiya, this isn’t really a place for civilians- I know you’re upset about your mother, and I’m sorry-”

“Let me spell it out for you, Uncle Nav,” she said, looming over him with her tiny five foot three frame. “My mother and my grandfather are currently being held prisoner by Zakuul, and are possibly already dead. My grandmother and my ama are all but under house arrest, as is my father, and ama is probably not going to recover from the stress of seeing her son dragged away by a Zakuulan Exarch.”

What could he even say to that? “You have every right to be angry at me,” he tried to say, but she wasn’t done.

“And because the Republic powers-that-be have washed their hands of us, I’ve had to take maternity leave way earlier than I was planning to, and Jonas is on administrative leave, so are either of us even going to have a job to go back to when this is all over? Who knows!”

The last part of his heart that wasn’t already crushed into a shattered mess broke. “Jaiya,” he said softly, “you’re pregnant?”

She kept her arms crossed, but her expression faltered for a minute, a flash of tears threatening before she buried it again. “Ellaz wasn’t much of a mother to me, but I’ll be damned if I let my child grow up without a grandmother,” she said. “And no, this isn’t really a place for civilians, but that didn’t stop you from bringing your little after school book club with you, did it?”

“Jaiya,” Jonas scolded, “come on, babe-”

Floundering, Navin tried to grasp at the only thing he could get his head around. “I- I thought, you said you were interior design,” he said, as if that sentence made any sense at all.

The look she gave him was absolutely scathing, and she was the spitting image of her mother in that moment. “My father is the Director of CorSec, and my mother is a colonel in the Grand Army of the Republic- and you thought I’d waste my time going into _interior design_?”

Jonas stepped up beside her and tried to put his arm around her, as if to try and lure her away. “Jaiya, come on, this isn’t good for you to get this stressed,” he said, his voice a little firmer, as if he was trying for something more authoritative.

Koth was looking very much like he was trying to physically project himself to another part of the base, somewhere far away from this confrontation.

Navin couldn’t blame him.

“Jonas and I are Strategic Information Services,” she continued, ignoring Jonas’ attempts to calm her down. “Or we _were_ , before we were both quietly removed for being a security risk, thanks to our family connections.”

“ _Jaiya_.” Jonas’ tone was harder now. “That’s _enough_.”

Navin didn’t say anything as the two began to move away, waiting to see if the floor would instead just swallow him whole and put an end to this whole miserable endeavour.

“And _another_ thing!”

“ _Jaiya!_ ”

Navin winced as she rounded on him, pulling away from Jonas’ grip when he tried to intervene; she stomped straight over to him and stabbed a finger into his face. “Don’t try coming at me with this ‘ _this isn’t a place for civilians_ ’ nerfshit, as if there isn’t a twi’lek village here, or refugees from Zakuul, or as if you didn’t turn up with a couple of dozens kids that you expected them to protect and feed and shelter without anything to offer in return. At least I’m here to _work_.”

Koth stood up, carefully putting a hand in between the two of them. “Okay, I think we’ve all gotten the message pretty loud and clear,” he started to say, but she rounded on him instantly.

“You’re Zakuulan,” she spat, as if it was an accusation.

Koth bristled, but he didn’t rise to match her anger. “What gave it away?” he asked, with forced cheer in his voice. “Was it the accent, or was it the ‘ _I love Arcann the Tyrant_ ’ shirt? That one always gives me up.”

Jaiya looked back to him, a sneer on her face. “Of course you’d be hanging out with a fucking Zak,” she said, before turning on her heel and stalking from the cantina.

The silence that hung in the aftermath of her exit was excruciating, and Navin just wanted to die of shame and self-loathing as Koth slowly sank back into the seat beside him. There were only a few other people in the cantina at this hour, and they were all studiously pretending not to stare, while all of them most certainly did. He wanted to throw up.

Finally, Koth cleared his throat. “That was your sister back on Corellia, yeah?” he said quietly.

Navin nodded, feeling hollow and brittle. “Yeah.”

“The one that pretended to be drunk and then tried to shoot me, and then decked you?”

The comment was so absurd, in hindsight, and his mood was so fragile, that he couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah. That was my little sister,” he said.

Koth nodded slowly, as if considering his words. “Well,” he said. “I can see where your niece gets it from.”

Navin laughed. There wasn’t much else he could do.

* * *

_Alliance Medical Bay, Odessen, Wild Space_

Kol flicked the stim absently, making sure the liquid within was settled before she pressed it to the side of Theron’s neck. “And how long have you been doing these marvellous home improvements?” she asked wryly, tossing the empty stim injector into the hazardous waste bin on the far wall; it didn’t even touch the sides on the way in, and she mimed throwing a huttball. “See that? That was skill, unlike the hack job someone did on your implants, which caused the infection currently playing havoc with your inner ear.”

Theron winced and tried to pull away when she started carefully prodding around the metal frame by his temple. “It was not- ow!”

They were alone in one of the private exam rooms in the medical bays below ground, an area that Kol’aya had been slowly coming to spend more and more time each day. She was immensely bored on Odessen, and she wasn’t someone who could be content sitting about and enjoying her unexpected vacation time. She _needed_ to be doing things, and so at first reluctantly but with increasing fervour as the days passed, she made her way downstairs to the medbay to see what she could do to assist the skeleton crew serving the Alliance. There were refugees from both Zakuul and Tython in need of general medical aid, and there were younglings rescued from across the galaxy who were in need of constant care for skinned knees and blood noses and vaccines and sniffles. The Alliance had begun to undertake more open defiance of the throne, and that meant there were soldiers coming back for more extensive care than could be provided in the field.

All in all, there was plenty to do. Especially when certain people overworked themselves to the point of having their implants short circuit. “There, there, baby, the anaesthetic will kick in shortly.”

He scowled at her. “It was _not_ a hack job, I am perfectly capable of conducting my own field repairs-”

“Is that why there’s so much bruising? Because it totally wasn’t a hack job?”

“I was _going_ to go to a medic,” he said, “once I had _time_.”

She hid her smirk out of his line of sight, as she gently prised open the cover of the main implant device with her tweezers and set it down in the sterile bowl beside her. “Uh huh,” she said, with false understanding. “That’s a good plan, actually.”

He perked up. “Really? See, I was trying to optimise-”

“No! Damn, how did you even fall for that?” She found the uplink fibres and scanned them quickly with her medscanner, bringing up the implant programing files on her computer. “Wow.”

“See, now I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.”

“You just... went in and deleted like, half the coding, huh? Just thought you could do it better than actual medical programmers?”

He raised a finger as if to emphasize his point. “I have specific needs as a part of my job as an operative-”

“Did you really just try to increase the memory capacity by just plugging more chips into your skull without properly integrating them with the original medical software?”

He was silent for a moment, mouth hanging open, before he tried again. “No, see, I can explain-”

“You’re an operative, the terror of the enemies of democracy, the lone hope of the Republic, etcetera etcetera,” she said, expertly balancing a pair of tweezers, a fine hydrospray nozzle and a screwdriver in her hands. “Okay, hopefully the anaesthetic has kicked in by now, but you still might feel a little bit of pressure here...”

She flicked on the hydrospray, aiming the tiny jet of water into the implant.

Theron wrinkled his nose up. “Oh wow, that does feel weird.”

Holding the screwdriver in her teeth as she reached for the suction nozzle to clear out the excess water, she resisted the urge to shake her head. “I’m going to guess from your tone that you’ve never had your pieces professionally cleaned before,” she managed to say past the tool in her mouth.

“Uh... no? I mean like, I shower, if that’s what you mean. I use soap and everything.”

“Your boyfriend must be so proud.”

“But you don’t have to go to a doctor and get your _bones_ cleaned, they’re inside your body, so is an implant-”

“An implant is a foreign object in the body that is treated as hostile by the immune system regardless of how many years you’ve had it in, and in the case of implants such as yours, it is quite literally an open wound allowing bacteria to enter directly into the bloodstream by leaving an opening in the skin.”

He paused for a beat. “Well when you put it like that,” he said, sounding mildly chastised.

She switched hands again, setting down the screwdriver and the tweezers as she worked as delicately as possible with the hydrospray and the brush. “Yours isn’t so bad,” she admitted. “I’ve seen some real horror shows over the years.”

“That’s such a boost to my self esteem, thank you so much.”

“You’ve got a little bit of dirt in here, and a little bit of pus-”

“ _Ew_.”

“Which is your body’s natural reaction to infection, it’s a surplus of white blood cells,” she said patiently. “You’ve also got some scar tissue back here, some of which is being aggravated by the edge of the implant- you ever had electrical glitches? Feels a little like the zap you get when you get a static build up on your clothes?”

Theron laughed awkwardly. “Uh, well... yes. I’ve also been electrocuted numerous times, with Force lightning and the regular kind of electricity.”

“Of course you have,” she muttered, finishing up the rinse and then carefully going about reattaching the cover and cleaning the residual water off of his face. His smile was a little lopsided thanks to the anaesthetic, and it made him look ridiculous, in a harmless sort of way. She leaned against the bed opposite when she was finished, arms crossed. “So, a couple of things.”

“I’ll eat all my greens and get a full eight hours sleep, I’ll cut back on my caf and alcohol intake-”

“Ha ha smartass, I’m absolutely convinced.” She gestured towards his head. “So we’ll get you set up with some antibiotics for the infection, and you can use some pain stims if the ear ache continues tonight.”

He hopped down off of the bed, his hand drifting up to his ear as if out of habit to rub at the irritation. “Much obliged, doc,” he drawled.

“Now, that scar tissue. How often do you get these sorts of issues?”

“Uh, hard to say, I guess, couple times a year?”

She nodded. “So the scar tissue is being aggravated by the edge of the implant- not terribly, and it’s obviously been a gradual thing over the years, the scar tissue building up from all of your recreational electrocutions-”

“Hey! At least one of those was a Dark Council member, give me some credit.”

“That’s not a point in your favour, if anything that makes it worse because they probably hurt you a hell of a lot more than just your run of the mill electrocution,” she said. “What I’d recommend-”

The door to the room slid open without warning, and she scowled, turning to face the interloper. “Middle of an exam here, have some fucking respect for privacy.”

“I could’ve been _naked_ ,” Theron said with mock horror behind her.

It was one of the medical aides whose name she couldn’t remember, someone who had come over from Moff Pyron’s staff. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said, glancing quickly around the room. “Um, bit of a foolish question- you don’t have Lord Nox in here, do you?”

Kol’aya stared at him flatly; a thousand sarcastic responses flashed through her head, but instead she tried for something a little more professional. “No, she is not,” she said tersely.

“And you, ah- you haven’t seen her?”

She frowned. “No?”

He nodded rapidly. “Okay, thank you! Sorry for, um, interrupting, carry on!”

The door slid closed again, and Kol and Theron looked at each other. “I don’t even want to know,” she muttered, shaking her head.

“She’s probably just gone and made herself comfortable in Lana’s bed,” Theron said jokingly. “She’s impossible like that.”

Kol held out a hand. “ _Thank_ you,” she said. “Goddess, I thought it was just me.”

He shook his head. “Nah, she’s always been terrible like that. I mean, to each their own I guess, but uh... wow, sure am glad I’m not her type and get spared that particular kind of attention from her.”

“Count your lucky stars.”

She continued explaining the surgical options for him, talking about the ongoing problems he was going to face with the inflammation around the implants, and he surprised her by sobering up and asking proper, informed questions about it all. He was obviously a little cagey about letting her have unmitigated access to the software he was running on them, but other than that-

There was a knock on the door.

“Occupied,” she called out through gritted teeth.

Tahrin’s seneschal, the pinch-faced officer named Quinn, stepped into the room without an apology. “We may have a situation on our hands,” he said, his voice clipped and unfriendly as it always was; Kol didn’t think she’d seen him be friendly to anyone so far. No wonder Tahrin trusted him so much, they were two peas in a pod. “Lord Nox is not in her medical suite, and the monitoring equipment indicates she left several hours ago. Have either of you had any contact with her recently?”

She glanced at Theron, who was looking at Quinn somewhat leerily. “I go out of my way not to have contact with Dark Council members,” he said.

Quinn’s lips thinned. “A tedious attempt at humour, as always, Shan.” He turned to her. “Doctor?”

Kol shrugged. “Can’t say I have.”

He left them to it, but there was obviously something going on in the hallway, if the noise was anything to go by; it seemed likely they weren’t going to get anything else done without interruption, so Kol sighed and waved Theron on his way. He was supposed to be leading the strike team conducting some sort of digital raid against Zakuul- she’d heard the words treasury ship bandied about, and something about cryptocurrencies, and decided it wasn’t trying to work out what the fuck the nerds were so smug about. Something about devaluing money, or breaking the servers that made money? She didn’t understand it. He was having fun with his spy nerd friends that’d flown in a few days ago, she didn’t need to understand it.

Frankly, it annoyed her that she even knew that much about what was going on- with every little sliver of information, it felt like she was being drawn more and more into the inner machinations of the Alliance. She was well and truly past the point of plausible deniability at this point, and it frustrated her. Did she like Zakuul, and the stranglehold they had on the galaxy? Not particularly. Did she think it changed enough for the regular people of the galaxy that it warranted joining a vigilante organisation? Not really.

Ryloth had been occupied by tyrants for centuries, without any intervention by the hallowed Republic and their bleating promises of democracy and freedom. What was any different about a Zakuulan occupation? At least they weren’t being rounded up like cattle and sold en masse by the Zakuulans.

There was another knock on the door, wrenching her out of her grouchy thoughts. Quinn had returned, his face tight. “Doctor Torr,” he said, “if I might ask for your assessment on something from Lord Nox’s charts?”

Sliding more and more into the inner machinations. She sighed. “Yeah, sure,” she said, following him from the room and down the hallway. The medbay was far busier than it had been an hour ago, with nurses and technicians dashing to and fro and whispering hastily to one another in alcoves nervously. Kallathe had been mostly confined to the largest suite since her explosive confrontation with Arcann on Asylum had nearly killed her, and from the brief glimpses that Kol had had of her, she’d been predominantly bedridden.

That was not the case now, however, as Quinn led her into the now crowded room to see the bed empty, the sheets tossed aside as if the occupant had tossed and turned a great deal before climbing out. There were leads and cables strewn across the bed and floor too, previously intended to monitor Nox’s heartbeat and blood pressure and general life signs; Tahrin was there, as was Lana, and Kol could at least feel sorry for the poor woman for the stress her spouse kept putting her through.

Tahrin nodded tersely to her in greeting. “Thank you, doctor,” she said. “We appreciate your assistance in this matter.”

“No problem,” she said uneasily, at a loss at what else was appropriate to say in this sort of situation. “So she’s just... gone?”

“It would appear so,” Tahrin said.

“And nobody saw anything?”

Lana’s eyes were red-rimmed, but her expression was jagged and icy, as if she refused to show anything other than a steel core. “If someone had seen something, we would hardly be having this conversation, Doctor Torr,” she said, each word bitten off as if it was hard to speak it aloud.

Kol’aya closed her mouth on the snarled retort she almost let escape, pausing for a beat to compose herself. “You said you needed my assessment on something, Quinn?” she said instead, proud of herself for sounding polite.

He led her over to the computer terminal, clicking through the various files until he brought up the last recordings taken before Nox vanished. “As you can see, the leads were disengaged quite abruptly,” he said, gesturing to the sharp drop in the readouts, “but prior to that-”

“She was definitely experiencing large amounts of physical stress,” Kol said, leaning in closer to enlarge some of the graphs. “Even for a Sith, these blood pressure readings are just... _goddess_.”

“I am of the opinion that Lord Nox was not taken unawares, if she was kidnapped,” Quinn continued.

“Agreed- her vitals would have been far more stable if she’d been asleep at the time.” She scrolled further back, watching the wild fluctuations in the readings. “I don’t think it happened suddenly, though.”

Lana and Tahrin had followed them over to the counter, and she tried to tell herself her skin wasn’t crawling to have two powerful Sith Lords staring at her so intently. “Explain,” Tahrin said bluntly.

Kol rotated the screen slightly, enough so that all four of them could see the graphs as she traced the lines with her finger. “See this, here? That’s the cortisol levels in her blood, and you can see that while there’s a few spikes- particularly towards the end- the increase is fairly gradual. If she’d been taken by surprise, if someone had jumped her and dragged her out of the room, we’d expect to see a much more severe uptick just before the monitors disengaged.”

“Cortisol?” Lana said.

“Stress hormone, give or take,” Kol’aya said. “Whatever sent her running, it was something she was dealing with over the course of a few hours, not all at once. Until we see it peak here-” She tapped the screen, “-just before the readings stopped.”

“That was my assessment, as well,” Quinn said, and she tried not to roll her eyes at the smug little note in his voice. He was a Sith lapdog, maybe he got fed biscuits for performing adequately, just like a good little lapdog. “Thank you for confirming my suspicions.”

She smiled thinly at him. “Always good to get a second opinion in these situations,” she said, as insincerely as possible. “None of the staff on duty saw anything at all?”

Lana shook her head, her eyes distant while she held a hand to her chin and held onto her elbow with the other hand; not quite hugging herself, but certainly closing off her body language. “The security footage is corrupted over the space of several hours when she presumably disappeared,” she said quietly, and Kol had a brief moment of actual sympathy for her. “All of the technical team was working on the treasury server attacks, and the breach went unnoticed.”

“Shan has diverted people from their task to work on defragmenting the corrupted footage,” Quinn started to say, but Tahrin shook her head.

“Tell him to put them back to work. Zakuul is and must always remain our focus, and if we fail at this attack, we will not get a second chance to undermine Zakuul’s economy.”

Kol looked between the three of them. “You... aren’t serious, right?” she said incredulously. “You’re aware of a woman in very poor health going missing, and you take away resources to find her to continue with your goddamn _war?”_

Tahrin stared at her, and Kol’aya felt as if the temperature of the room had dropped by several degrees.

Lana was stony faced, staring down at the screen as if lost in thought. “So, for Kallathe to have been experiencing escalating stress over a period of hours that no one was able to witness, the only explanation could be-”

“My father,” Tahrin said calmly.

Kol’aya blinked.

The sound Lana let out was heartbreaking. “She didn’t give any indication that he was troubling her,” she began.

“I doubt she would,” Tahrin said. “Nox is a prideful creature, after all.”

“Have a care how you speak about my wife, Wrath.”

“I’m sorry, hey,” Kol’aya said waving a hand between them, “yeah, hi, can we just back up here? _Your_ father?”

Tahrin’s expression didn’t change, but she felt the pressure in the room increase tenfold, and her earcones ached bitterly; she realised- far too late- that it was the same sort of intense emotional fluctuation she had witnessed in Anya. And Thexan.

And Arcann.

“Yes,” Tahrin said simply, as if it was a completely normal thing to admit to. “Lord Nox carries the spirit of my father within her.”

The conversation continued without her, while Kol’aya felt her stomach sink lower and lower within her, a yawning sense of horror growing within her. This wasn’t some noble war she’d been caught up in, a brave and noble rebellion against tyranny.

This was an episode of fucking Family Feud- and this goddamn family was playing for the fate of trillions of lives.

So did that make her one of the challengers?

... or one of the prizes?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to ruin the thrill at the end of the chapter with a downer, but as I said on tumblr- if you don't like one of my characters, don't comment on my fic. I 10000% do not want to hear how much you dislike or hate one of my characters.
> 
> On story related matters, you may have guessed that with our mentions of Aric and a treasury ship and Kallathe going missing that we've flown through a couple of in-game chapters at once, and you would be correct! Like I said last time, we aren't going to be up close and personal with those adventures, because Kol'aya is not the Outlander and is not involved in those operations, and I'm assuming that most of us here have played through those chapters so many times that we could do them in our sleep. I figured nobody needs me rehashing those scenes when we can instead have fun with relationship angst.


	8. Chapter 8

_It just requires determination, and the conscious effort of waking up each day and saying ‘today I will do good’._

* * *

_The Wilds, Odessen, Wild Space_

Kallathe knew she hadn’t fallen asleep with a rock stabbing into her lower back, but she could certainly feel one there now. Granted, no hospital bed was comfortable, no matter how hard they tried to make it so, and she’d certainly been tossing and turning enough these last few days to be painfully sensitive all over with bed-sores. She didn’t quite think they had resorted to replacing the pillows with rocks, however.

She opened her eyes.

It was quiet, and cold- the later presumably because she was lying on the bank of a shallow river, the pebbled riverbed definitely not the most comfortable place she’d ever found herself waking in. It was dark, the night sky an inky purple, and the stars were cold and bright in their distant mantle; the pines around her were still, no wind to stir their branches. Her clothing was soaked, her skin clammy.

... this was definitely not the medical bay.

She rolled very slowly onto her side, wincing as her entire body protested at the notion; with some fumbling difficulty, she reached behind her and shoved away the rock that had been stabbing her in the back, its’ edges not yet smooth from the water. Even that small effort was enough to leave her panting quietly, her eyes closed as she waited for the entire world to stop spinning around her.

How had she gotten here- and where was here? This felt vaguely like the trials she had undergone as a girl, when her first master had sent her into the Dark Temple on Dromund Kaas time and time again; she had lost hours, days, weeks of her life in there, in a haze of rabid violence and paranoia. There were portions of time that she had no recollection of at all, especially in her first few outings- Zhivalla had sought to teach her control, and mastery of self, and what better way to do that than to expose her to one of the greatest sources of corruption in the known galaxy? Even in his great silence, Emperor Vitiate’s mere echo was enough to poison the land itself, driving those who dared to tread there mad.

This absence in her mind, it felt like him again. Unsurprising, given that what remained of him was embedded in her like a parasite.

But he was not there now.

With great difficulty, she managed to crawl onto her hands and knees, spitting out blood and grit onto the dark shore; the night was not entirely silent, the rustle of mid-sized creatures in the undergrowth and the chirp of nocturnal insects and the gentle trickle of the river all harmonising with one another. It contrasted violently with the silence in her skull, because for the first time in over five years, she could not feel Vitiate pushing outwards, as if he was trying to physically oust her from her own brain. The water dribbled off of the end of her chin tendrils, dripping onto the ground below her.

This had to be another one of his games. Waking up somewhere unfamiliar, with no knowledge of how she had gotten there, and with no avaricious passenger trying to wrench control from her? If she didn’t know better, she’d almost suspect that this was a dreamscape, that Vitiate had finally succeeded in conquering her and had expelled her to this placid neverwhere- as it was, she had to stop and consider it for a moment before discarding the idea as foolish.

Bracing herself, she managed to push herself to her feet, wobbling badly for a moment as she waited for her head to settle. Wherever she was right now, she needed to get out of her wet clothes and she needed to get up higher, to find a landmark or something; presumably she was still on Odessen, but if she climbed up the escarpment, she could look for a settlement, and failing that she could take her bearings from the stars. Maybe. Possibly. She wasn’t familiar with the skyscape in this region of the galaxy.

She lifted her chin. “I am Kallathe Jen’zuska, daughter of the First Kings of Korriban,” she said, her voice a mere rattle. “I can trace my bloodline back through the ages.” It was a mantra she repeated to herself over and over again as she hobbled slowly up the beach towards the trees. There looked to be something of a path through the trees, obviously something used by larger animals making their way through the undergrowth, and she followed this.

“I am heir to the legacy of the Dread Masters.” She stumbled slightly on an exposed tree root, and several dark shadows hissed and giggled, jumping from branch to branch as they followed along after her like carrion birds.

“I am a Dark Lord of the Sith Council.” She pressed a hand hard to the smooth bark of a tree, waiting for her head to stop spinning. It didn’t, so she forged onwards anyway.

“I am Kallathe Jen’zuska, and I will not be beaten by any man.” She expected him to interrupt, to surge up out of nowhere with a triumphant sneer on his face and a smug platitude on his lips. But there was nothing, nothing in her head but herself, and she-

She could smell woodsmoke.

She paused. The Alliance base did not rely on anything so primitive as wood fires- although she had heard Lana mention something briefly about a twi’lek settlement, and maybe that was something that sort of rabble would indulge in. A twi’lek settlement would know where their headquarters were- if this was indeed still Odessen- and if it wasn’t, well... surely whoever it was would have a transmitter she could borrow to contact help?

Gritting her teeth, she pushed herself further up the slope, her breath wheezing from between sharp teeth as she staggered upwards. There was a sharp pain between her ribs, a muscle cramp that she couldn’t quite ease no matter how hard she pressed her fingers into it. The smell of woodsmoke grew stronger, and through the thick trees she could see a light.

When she burst into a small clearing, she drew herself up quickly at the sight of a hunched figure sitting on a log before a fire, wrapped in heavy cloaks with their head bowed towards the flames. There was something... something not quite right about them, something that made it hard to focus on them directly- like staring at heat waves in the distance, or trying to catch a glimpse of the shapes that danced at the corner of her vision. The figure did not move when she stormed loudly from the undergrowth, but after a moment of staring at them across the fire, panting loudly, she heard them laugh softly.

“Ah, I wondered when you would make your way here,” they said, their voice as hard to parse as their physical form; it was as if her mind simply did not want to translate the information her eyes and her ears were sending her, and was instead providing a half hearted interpretation. “Come closer, my dear, come closer- please, warm yourself by the fire.”

She hesitated, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

The figure laughed again. “Ah, you are suspicious- I do not blame you, child-”

“Do not call me a child if you do not wish to have fragments of your body scattered across three star systems,” Kallathe snarled, hugging an arm to her aching ribs fiercely.

Another laugh sounded behind her, and she spun about violently, finding herself coming face to face with what seemed like a literal wall of armour. “Are you antagonising our guest, Vivaane?”

Kallathe looked up- and up- into the face of another Pureblood, his expression relatively placid for all that he’d laughed a moment ago. From behind them came a huffed sigh of annoyance. “Scourge, you came in too early- I hadn’t even gotten to the bit where I offered her some stew,” the voice said, this time far more tangible and younger.

The Pureblood- presumably someone named Scourge- was staring down at her, and so she bared her teeth at him; he smirked, and that riled her up even more, but then he nodded as if in acknowledgement of her power. He held an arm out, as if to usher her towards the fire. “Won’t you take a seat, Nox?” he asked politely, in a tone that was as bland and unassuming as his expression. There was something slightly off about that, and she didn’t trust it for one moment. “Do not fear Vivaane- even in life, she was incapable of cooking. You will not be forced to endure her stew.”

When she looked back to the fire, the hunched figure shrouded in a thousand blankets was gone, and in its’ place was a young woman- or rather, the ghostly outline of a young human woman. Kallathe sucked in a breath sharply; she had seen Kaltix bind and consume enough ghosts in their younger days together that she was no stranger to the presence of the undead, but it was still unnerving to witness. The sheer force of will it took, to resist the call of the Force and maintain a consciousness and a sentience separate from the Force and whatever lay beyond... it was no small feat. The young woman shook her head, and her incorporeal hair billowed down her back as she preened. “Can you imagine, though?” she said delightedly, something wicked in her eyes. “Oh, look at me, I’m the wise old crone hiding in the woods. Come and have my stew and heed my wisdom, child!” She cackled, as if it was the most delightful jest she’d ever heard.

Kallathe had inched closer to the fire, mostly so as not to let Scourge touch her, but she still kept her distance as the Pureblood took a seat on another log near to the ghost named Vivaane. “Who are you?” she asked bluntly, making sure the fire was between her and them. “What are you doing here?”

Vivaane made a pondering noise, teetering between childish delight and mischievous curiosity. “Hmm, what _are_ we doing here, Scourge? What _are_ any of us doing here, in the grand scheme of things?”

“Speak plainly, or I will destroy you.”

Her smile was wide and feral. “But I am a ghost, dear Kallathe,” she crooned. “You cannot kill what is already dead.”

“Nerfshit,” she snarled. “I’ve seen Kallig eat his fair share of ghosts over the years-”

“Truly?” Vivaane perked up. “Well then, that requires some investigation- it’s been _such_ a long time since anyone ate me out-”

“ _Vivaane_ ,” Scourge growled.

Vivaane winked at her, and licked her lips.

Kallathe grudgingly reassessed her opinion of her from annoying menace to possible... something. She’d need to check with Lana whether ghosts counted as infidelity. Although speaking of Lana, and knowing how frantic she’d likely be right now... “Where am I?” she asked. “And what are you two doing here? Don’t give me any crap about a fated meeting, either- you were clearly waiting for me.”

The ghost and the Pureblood glanced at each other, as if deciding who was to speak first. Finally she nodded to him, and they turned back to her. “You likely know us by our titles, rather than our names,” he said, that same eerie calm in his voice. “I am Lord Scourge, formerly the Emperor’s Wrath, and this is Vivaane Dara- formerly-”

“There’s nothing _former_ about me, Scourge,” she said archly, batting her eyelashes. “I am Darth Revan. You may refer to me however you see fit.”

“I suggest insufferable trollop,” Scourge said, without missing a beat.

“Now, now, Scourge darling, that’s hardly polite- I haven’t tried to kill you for _weeks_ now, and at least _I_ never succeeded.”

Kallathe put both hands up to her head. “This has to be some sort of prank of his,” she said, turning slowly to face the dark woods. “What are you playing at this time, you unoriginal cum stain? Enough with these fucking mind games!”

“He will not hear you.” She turned back around to Vivaane, who had a somewhat serious expression on her face. She made a grand show of inspecting her nails, a gesture just as pointless as primping her hair earlier. “He has weakened himself so immensely in keeping you alive that he will need time to recover. He will not bother you- his vanity will not allow him to appear weak.”

She stared suspiciously at them, eyes narrowed. “How do you know this?”

Scourge gestured to the fire. “You should sit- you require warmth.”

“I do not take instructions from _men-_ ”

“Or don’t then. Die of hypothermia. Our plans continue with or without you.”

She bristled, staring him down across the fire; his expression never wavered, and now she had no idea whether she wanted to defy him with her refusal, or defy him with her acceptance. Finally, after warring with herself for a few long moments, she stiffly moved around the log beside her and sat primly upon it, chin raised pointedly high; she didn’t bother to extend her hands towards the flames. “So,” she said, adopting as haughty a tone as she could muster, “a failed assassin so inept that he was replaced by someone from a test tube, and the ghost of a woman so irrelevant no one even remembers your name. Tell me why I should care that you’ve apparently stalked me through the woods.”

Vivaane feigned a grievous blow to the heart, clutching a hand to her chest, but Scourge didn’t even blink. “You carry the spirit of Emperor Vitiate within you,” he said. “We have made it our sworn duty throughout the ages to see that his reign of terror is ended permanently, and we mean to follow through on that.”

“So you lure me into the wounds, alone and unarmed, in order to kill me?”

A log in the fire crumbled, sending a spray of bright red sparks into the air. “Vitiate has not the patience for death,” Vivaane said, tone amused. “He rails against it, because he thinks himself above it- but more importantly, he _fears_ it. More than anything in the galaxy, more than any army or empire or god, he fears death with a level of paranoia that cannot be comprehended.”

Kallathe sniffed. “Given that I’ve already killed him, I’d say he has good reason to fear me.”

“And yet he still lives, within you,” Scourge said. “You are not the first of his contingency plans, and I would wager my life that you are not even close to the last.”

“This is all well and good- always did love a vaguely ominous philosophical discussion- but none of this explains what I am doing in the middle of nowhere, soaking wet, with a ghost and an idiot.”

Vivaane looked at Scourge. “I like her,” she said.

His gaze was flat, unmoved by the insults yet again. “It’s like giving an orobird a mirror and letting it preen and flirt with its’ own reflection- of course you like her.”

Kallathe was rather frustrated with their mysterious circumventions of her questions, and she rose to her feet. “If you’re going to ignore me,” she began, but Vivaane- or Darth Revan, apparently- surged up to meet her, gliding through the flames untouched.

“I have been watching you since you arrived on Odessen, Nox,” she said, and for the moment her expression was entirely earnest. “I could feel Vitiate within you, like a black hole slumbering in dormancy before bursting to life and consuming us all once again.”

The imagery was particularly bleak, given that she now had intimate memories of the destruction of both Medriaas and Ziost thanks to the deeply horrifying bond she had with Vitiate, his memories bleeding into her mind until she couldn’t tell which were hers and which were his. She didn’t say anything, for once finding no tart sarcasm rising to her tongue with which to dismiss Revan’s comments.

“Vitiate exhausted himself trying to save your life from the lightsaber wound that should have killed you,” she continued, “but it didn’t stop him from trying to fight you for control. Now, you might not remember how you got out here-”

“I do not.”

“-but that was his doing. He tried to abscond with your body, and Scourge and I followed. He only made it a mile or so before the effort of keeping you in submission overwhelmed him, and so...” She gestured to her.

Kallathe raised a pierced eyebrow. “And so you felt the best resolution for the situation was to leave me half drowned in a riverbed, instead of helping me to safety,” she said sarcastically.

Vivaane shrugged. “You were alive, and we made sure that you _didn’t_ drown.” Something mischievous sparkled in her eyes. “Can’t expect much better from a ghost and an idiot, hmm?”

She crossed her arms, trying to ignore how icy cold her wet clothes were. “What do you want with me, then?”

Vivaane looked back over her shoulder at Scourge, and he quite visibly rolled his eyes- Kallathe could see it through Vivaane’s ghostly form. She was grinning when she turned back to her, as if she and the other sith had just shared some private joke at her expense. “Neither of us are particularly good people,” she said, “and we are three hundred years too late, but- better late than never when it comes to doing the right thing.”

“And what is the _right_ thing?”

“Why, killing Vitiate for good this time,” Vivaane said. When she smiled, her eyes were dark and inhuman, and her teeth were sharp. “Because who would know better how to kill a ghost than a ghost?”

* * *

_New Kalikori, Odessen, Wild Space_

When the Mandalorians publicly allied themselves with the Alliance, Kol’aya made the decision to quietly move over to the twi’lek village. There was a small room available in the town med clinic, ostensibly nothing more than a store room at the time but certainly not the smallest place she’d ever lived in, and it helped her to feel like she was doing something with her time that wasn’t just anxiously checking over her shoulder every five minutes. Granted, on a military base there was plenty of things she could’ve been doing, but the chances of her running into Ysaine in New Kalikori were much lower than if she’d continued working over there.

She felt bad about it, but she also didn’t, at the same time. This wasn’t her war, and she hadn’t joined the Alliance out of the goodness of her heart; she certainly hadn’t agreed to let them hold her indefinitely on this remote planet, with nothing to do but help further their interests. She didn’t necessarily disagree with their goal in theory, but just... it was all so messy and hard to explain. Fighting tyranny was all well and good, but expecting a Sith Lord to be a beacon of change and moral fortitude was sort of like asking a gizka to grow eyes. She didn’t trust the Lord Wrath as far as she could throw her, and given that Master Dawnstar was married to the Senator for Balmorra- a planet that banked its’ entire economy on producing war machines- she wasn’t too enamoured with her either.

But she didn’t want anyone to think that meant she was on board with what Zakuul was doing, with their space stations of death and all- even if Arcann had saved her life, and tried to sway her with promises that he wanted less people to suffer. No, wait, he’d wanted less people to die because his _father_ ate them- significantly different to their levels of suffering, or whether or not his people were responsible for their deaths. Maybe he didn’t give a shit about the quality of life they had, just whether or not they were murdered by his dear old dad.

It wasn’t like the Alliance gave much of a shit about the quality of life of the people suffering under Zakuul’s rule. She hadn’t heard all that much about support for Denon, or Bothawui- not to mention the five planets that had been deliberately ravaged since Kallathe’s rescue, as a sort of bizarre retribution. She knew people on Dubrillion, and it broke her heart to see the suffering on the news each night. Zakuul killed people- _Arcann_ killed people- and the Alliance did nothing but stage more attacks in retaliation. It wasn’t anything sustainable or restorative, it wasn’t helping the people who needed help.

It was just... shitslinging. Infinitely powerful people trading blows, and using the little people of the galaxy as their fists.

She hated it so much.

And now the Mandalorian clans had taken a stand as well, severing ties with the Sith Empire in a well overdue gesture; Kol’aya made it her goal to learn as little about the goings on of the Alliance as possible, because it sickened and frustrated her so much, so she wasn’t sure what had prompted it. She heard Darvannis bandied about in some conversations, but she couldn’t remember a Clan being associated with that planet, so she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that Mandalore was coming, and a good number of the Clan leaders- and that meant Ysaine was coming, and she didn’t really feel like trying to deal with her complicated feelings for the woman on top of all the other shit in her life.

Looking after the sick kids of a settler colony and dealing with injuries from farming accidents wasn’t exactly where she’d pictured her life taking her, but... it wasn’t bad, either. No different from living on Rishi, and helping the slaves who’d been maimed and injured doing dangerous salvage for the pirates, or living on Nar Shaddaa and helping the victims of the Hutts’ gang warfare alongside the drunks and the addicts. The little people of the galaxy, who didn’t have anyone else fighting for them.

And it wasn’t so bad, all things considered. She felt more comfortable here, in a room above ground, where she could see the sunshine and not feel so constricted; she could hear twi’leki being spoken openly outside her window, or the pidgin Basic that incorporated the nonverbal lek language with the spoken Basic. She could smell foods that reminded her of Ryloth, of the same meals her mother used to make when she was a child. It was bittersweet, in a lot of ways, but she didn’t feel as much on her guard as she did around the humans.

The Mandalorians had flown in two days ago, a raucous collection of mismatched ships, painted in garish colours and with jetstreams trailing smoke in a rainbow of colours- they never did things by halves, the Mandos. She thought she recognised the ugly old brute that Ysaine flew, deceptively called The Bug; she’d spent six months aboard that old clanker, when Izzy had been framed by the Republic Chancellor and the Jedi Battlemaster, and on the run.

She tried to ignore the ache in her heart when it flew overhead, and went back inside while the rest of the village watched enraptured.

For two days, she just smiled tightly whenever anyone came into the clinic and mentioned the Mandalorians. For two days, she found reasons to casually change the subject.

And then, Ysaine came to find her.

She was just finishing up with a broken arm one of the young men had sustained during a rather rough game of improvised smashball when she heard the buzzer at the front door sound. “Just a minute,” she called over her shoulder. She turned back to the young man, who was studiously pretending that there weren’t fresh tear tracks on his face from the pain. “Okay- it’s not a proper break, just a greenstick, so the brace will do you good until it’s had time to heal,” she said, clicking it into place around his wrist. “I’ll give you more painkillers, but try not to use them excessively. Come back straight away if the pain gets worse, yeah?”

He nodded, sniffing miserably as he hugged the braced arm to his chest.

“Good lad,” she said, clapping him gently on the opposite shoulder as she helped him to his feet. She turned with him, meaning to guide him towards the door, but she froze when she saw Izzy lounging in one of the chairs by the door, her long legs splayed out before her like she’d never been more comfortable. She wasn’t wearing Mando armour, instead dressed casually for the mild Odessen climate in a black leather jacket and baggy brown pants; the only splash of colour in her outfit were the rainbow laces in her combat boots, a strangely youthful fashion choice that was nonetheless entirely Ysaine.

“‘Sup, doc,” she drawled, hands in her pockets. There was a new scar on the left side of her face that she didn’t remember being there last time, the skin puckered and pale brown as it hugged her hairline. “Heard you were some kind of wiz with cybertech. Can a gal get an implant looked at around here?”

She must have tensed, because the young twi’lek man glanced at her. “Do you need me to get the matriarch’s husband?” he said carefully, speaking in twi’leki so that Ysaine would not understand.

Kol swallowed with difficulty, her jaw clenched. “It’s fine,” she said, answering in the same language. “She’s not a threat.”

As the young man moved towards the door, Ysaine made no effort to move her legs out of the way; she sketched a lazy salute with two fingers, almost insultingly so, and the young man flushed red with emotion. “Would’ve thought you’d have a cybertech or two amongst the rabble you flew in with,” Kol said loudly, giving the boy a chance to escape without trying to start anything. It worked, with Izzy rolling her head towards her with that same lazy grin on her face that made her heart stop.

“Girl’s gotta have standards, now,” she said, climbing languidly to her feet. “How am I supposed to turn down the opportunity to go visit the best cyber doc in the whole galaxy?”

She nodded jerkily, the compliment making her heart flutter. “Come on through,” she said, gesturing to the beds at the back of the room. It was a small clinic, only two beds and a currently empty kolto tank, but so far it met the needs of the community well enough. As Ysaine followed her, she said over her shoulder, “Have you been having any particular problems you wanted to talk about?”

“Well, see, here’s the thing doc- I have this really great friend, love her like a daughter, and she’s been doing her best to hide from me these last couple of days.”

Kol turned to her slowly, trying not to feel like the floor had tilted at a bad angle all of a sudden. Izzy was leaning up against the other bed, ankles crossed as she propped herself up on the edge, and the smile on her face was a little more cautious than a moment before. Somehow, she forced herself to say “And how has this affected your implants?”

She barely even got the whole sentence out before Ysaine sighed aggressively. “Fuck’s sake, Kol, are you not even gonna talk to me?”

“You said you came here for a doctor-”

“ _I’m_ a doctor, genius, and I may not be on par with you, but I can fix up a malfunctioning implant even if it’s in my own damn skull.” She crossed her arms. “I’ve been here for days now, and you haven’t even sent a damn comm.”

“Maybe I’ve been busy.”

“Yeah, you sure look busy, Bum Fuck Village sure looks like the damn centre of the galaxy. Dunno how you cope with it all-”

“What do you _want_ , Ysaine?”

Izzy spread her hands wide, an exasperated look on her face. “Maybe I wanted to see my friend,” she said, over enunciating the words as if she thought they were speaking a different language. “Maybe- _just maybe!_ \- I’ve experienced first hand how fucking brutal the Zaks are, and I was fucking terrified about you going right into their territory-”

“I’m not a _child_ -”

“You’re starting to act like one, hiding out here sulking instead of engaging with the rest of the world-”

“I am a _prisoner_ here! I owe them _nothing!_ ”

Ysaine held up her hands as if to call for a truce, and Kol bit off the rest of the angry diatribe on her lips; after a moment, Izzy sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of her nose with one hand while Kol discreetly tried to wipe away the angry tears building in her eyes. “I didn’t come here to yell at you,” Izzy started, and when Kol just laughed, she held up a hand again. “No, come on, you gotta stop doing that.”

Kol crossed her arms hard, shoulders hunched. “Stop doing what?”

“Assuming the worst of everyone immediately,” Izzy said. Her expression softened a little. “It was bad enough when Dia told me you’d signed on to get Nox out, but then I heard about Asylum, and how you weren’t conscious when they got back to Odessen...”

Goddess, it felt like she was being scolded like a fucking toddler, and it burned her _hard_ , shame and embarrassment sharp and sour in her gut. “It was my choice to make,” she said, the words clumsy in her mouth.

“Yeah, I’m not saying it ain’t your right, or that I ain’t done stupid shit these past few years neither,” she said quietly. “Shit Kol, when I heard about Asylum, I thought- I thought you’d _died_. And then I don’t hear nothing from you, not a peep, and when I show up, you wanna go acting like I’m a stranger.”

She blinked rapidly, wishing that the tears would stop coming faster than she could wipe them away. “I don’t want to do this,” she whispered.

She heard Ysaine sigh yet again, and there was a creak of leather as she pushed herself off the bed. “Come here,” she said, and Kol tried her hardest not to flinch as the other woman put her arms around her. “You know I love you, right?”

 _Just not the way I want you to_. “I know,” she whispered, breathing in the smell of her as she hid her face against her shoulder.

When Izzy pulled back, Kol couldn’t look her in the eye, but she didn’t seem to care; it took everything she had not to cringe when she reached up to wipe the tears off of her cheek for her. “I don’t regret not having kids- that’s just the way my life turned out, and I’m good with that- and it’s mostly ‘cause I got girls like you and Mako. It scared the shit out of me, hearing you’d got hurt.”

The intimacy of the embrace was a bit too much for her, and she pulled away slowly; Izzy seemed reluctant to let her go, her hand trailing away so that it took her physically stepping away to make her let go of her hand. She sniffed and rubbed at her face, turning to head to the wash basin on the wall, to give herself some space and the reprieve of not having to make eye contact.

“Nala said you had to deal with Arcann,” Ysaine said from behind her.

She bit off the bitter laugh before it could escape, shaking her head. “Of course she did,” she muttered, because of course Izzy hadn’t come just to check on her. It was still Alliance business-

“Hey now, I can literally feel your cynicism levels rising from over here,” she called. When she turned back towards her, drying her hands on a paper towel, Ysaine had a wry look on her face. “Ain’t nobody here knows you like I do.”

Kol crossed her arms again, bracing herself. “Maybe I’m just goddamn sick of being asked about Arcann over and over again, like everyone’s expecting me to be a double agent who was off scheming with him or some shit.”

Ysaine shrugged. “I just wanted to ask if you were okay,” she said, her face solemn. “You ain’t exactly had the best track record when it comes to... well, when it comes to dudes with bad intentions getting you alone.”

Kol sucked in a sharp breath.

“Sorry, I’m sorry- tried to step around that as careful as possible,” Izzy said, holding both her hands up. “Just needed to know whether I needed to go cut his nads off.”

Kol stared at her, trying to push back the memories choking her; she swallowed with difficulty, and looked away. “It wasn’t like that,” she said finally.

Except... wasn’t it? She’d asked him multiple times to stop ogling her, and he’d blatantly objectified her at least once. She didn’t want to say she’d been frightened of him, because she didn’t want to give him that power, but... something had happened there. He’d gotten under her skin, and it wasn’t just his leering machismo that had done it.

The flashes of intelligence in that golden eye, the moments of what had seemed like genuine grief... the surprise in his face when he’d saved her, as if even he hadn’t been expecting himself to do that.

That was fucking with her head far more than any crude lechery ever could.

“Y’still in there?”

She blinked, and realised that she’d drifted off in her thoughts; Ysaine was watching her carefully.

She sniffed. “Whatever, it’s fine.”

“Don’t look fine-”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, because she just... had no idea how to explain it. Especially not to a woman who- unwittingly or not- messed with her emotions so badly to start with. She didn’t want to try and explain the turmoil in her head to the woman who was responsible for the turmoil in her heart.

They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, the sounds of the outside world intruding between them- the village children running and laughing, the nearby farm equipment rumbling over the soil, even the distant sounds of shuttles coming and going from the military base nearby. Kol didn’t know what to say, or what it was that Izzy wanted from her- if this was her idea of paying a social call, she wasn’t a fan.

What was she supposed to do now? The more people who asked her about Asylum, the more she kept backing herself into a corner. Why was it so hard to just lay it out flat, to calmly list the elements of the conversation she’d had with the Emperor, and leave it at that? Why was she twisting herself into knots trying to hide parts of it away, even from people she had no reason to fear, like Izzy and Ona’la and Thexan?

What was she even _doing?_ With the Alliance, with her life? With anything?

“Hey.” She looked up to see Ysaine gesturing with one arm, as if to draw her into a hug. “C’mere. You got that look on your face again.”

There was a part of her that resisted, as always, but she found herself stepping over to the offer of the hug, tucking her head under Ysaine’s chin and closing her eyes.

“There we go,” Izzy said, running a hand up and down her arm. “You’re doing real good here, Kol, y’know? I know you ain’t happy with this whole arrangement, but you’re making the best of a bad situation. Ain’t no one asking you to spend your time helping folk.”

Kol groaned against her shoulder. “I would’ve gone mad with boredom weeks ago,” she mumbled.

Ysaine chuckled. “I know,” she said. “I’m surprised you didn’t, just on principle.”

“What, die from pride?”

“If anyone was gonna, it’d be you, babe.”

The words came out of her mouth before she could stop herself. “Or Arcann.”

The moment she said it, she tensed, realising what she’d given away; Ysaine similarly tensed, and Kol’aya couldn’t bring herself to pull away and look her in the face. “That so,” Ysaine said casually, her hand resuming the slide up and down her arm after a moment’s hesitation. “That something you’re personally familiar with?”

She’d said too much, there was nothing to stop Ysaine from marching back up the hill to the Alliance base and telling Tahrin and Kylaena everything, nothing to stop the interrogations from starting all over again-

_Stop assuming the worst of everyone._

She’d already told Thexan, and nothing had happened in the weeks since. Even if he and Tahrin were siblings- shit, did that mean that Ysaine was related to Thexan too? Was her brother married to the Lord Wrath, or did they just have kids together?

Kol shook her head- that was a horrifying idea to chase on another day- and pulled away from Izzy. Ysaine let her go, and Kol took a deep breath, turning away so that she wouldn’t be tempted to look at her face for judgement or repulsion or acceptance.

“Arcann saved my life on Asylum,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper as she hugged her arms to herself. “And then I... I tried to save him, even after he tried to kill Nox.”

Ysaine was silent for a moment, as if digesting this confession; Kol wished it didn’t feel like a condemnation, weighing heavily in the silence. “You tried?” she said finally. “He ain’t dead, so...?”

She took a deep breath. “He fell out of the tower we were in,” she said, and it sounded so surreal to be saying it out loud after all these weeks of holding it inside. “On Asylum. He and Nox both followed me to the tower, and they... fought.”

“She throw him out the window or something?”

“Asylum was already under attack by the Fleet,” she said, “and the tower took a hit.” She laughed softly. “It’s a wonder the turbolifts were even working, after that.”

“Shit, you didn’t-”

“Probably inhaled most of the smoke from the anxiety attack I had in the lift, but I survived.” She shrugged. “He fell from the top, when something hit the tower. He’d just... Nox was down, and I should’ve gone to check her, but I ran to the edge, and he was- he was just _there_ , so I...”

_I tried to save his life, and he chose to risk death._

“I called him a lot of really bad names,” she said, and behind her, Izzy laughed heartily.

A hand landed heavily on her shoulder. “That’s my girl,” she said, and when she glanced back at her, her grin was genuine, her eyes sparkling as if with mischief. “Give ‘em hell, even when you’re dragging ‘em back to safety.”

Kol laughed shakily. “I didn’t really... manage the second part.”

“Eh. Give it time.”

She looked up at her sharply. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

But Ysaine was irritatingly tight-lipped, just winking in answer. “Had some interesting conversations with Thexan and Nala,” she said instead.

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“It means, I don’t think Tazza has as much of an iron grip on things as she’d like to think she has,” Ysaine said, grinning broadly. “And that if you wanted off of Odessen, well... we’ll see how things go.”

Kol stared at her, and tried not to snarl at her in frustration, instead picking on the one part of the statement she could expect a reasonable answer for. “Tazza?” she said tersely.

Ysaine grinned even wider. “Her esteemed sithfulness, the Lord Wrath,” she said.

“Are you gonna explain any of the rest of that?”

Ysaine shrugged. “Weren’t you trying to make a new arm for Emperor Dorkann, couple of years back?” she asked instead.

Kol instantly went on the defensive. “Yes?” she said.

“I’m just saying, maybe give a couple of folk a call-”

“And tell them _what_ , exactly?”

“Ask ‘em if they wanna do something to do some good, and failing that, ask ‘em if they wanna do something that’ll make ‘em famous.” She winked. “And failing that, tell them it’ll make an excitable little twi’lek princess love ‘em even more.”

* * *

_Palace of the Eternal Dragon, Zakuul, Wild Space_

The war room was dark but for the glow of the holographic displays Arcann had active; it was late, late enough to be early, and the few analysts who were working the night shift to sift through the incoming data from across the galaxy were nowhere to be seen. He had dismissed them, snarling at them all to leave when he’d stormed into the room an hour or so earlier. He’d somewhat lost track of time- all he knew was that he hadn’t slept in some time, but as long as the sun hadn’t come up yet, he was still in the clear, right?

He smeared a hand over his face, his eyes hot and gritty from lack of sleep- his left eye in particular was watering badly from the strain, going unsupported without his mask. His face was aching, but he didn’t want to put it back on; he couldn’t put it back on. It was too tight, too small, too constricting, too claustrophobic, too much of everything, just _too much_.

He tried to focus on the images he had open in front of him- a series of five planets, all overlaid with figures and graphs that he’d been trying to force himself to read for what felt like hours now.

Five planets, he’d told Vaylin. Two Republic, two Sith, and one independent, as a reminder that Zakuul was not to be insulted or underestimated, as a repercussion for the terrorist acts carried out by individuals from across the political sphere. Make the galaxy remember that Zakuul would not tolerate such blatant disrespect, and watch them all fall back into line, afraid and simpering and compliant again.

Five planets, she’d set the Eternal Fleet loose on at his command. Bespin. Dromund Fels. Dubrillion. Leritor. Umbara. They were just names. Just numbers. The death count was just a number.

Except that this time, it _wasn’t_.

He’d given the order for the deaths of hundreds of millions on Coruscant alone during the initial blockades five years ago. Numbers, they were just numbers, they were always just numbers. Why was this different? Why was he suddenly finding himself awake in the middle of the night, obsessively reading about Dubrillion’s poetry festivals, and Umbara’s crystalline art, and Leritor’s contributions to the science of aquaponics? Why was he tormenting himself, looking over footage of the attacks and the aftermath, watching the newsreels from the major holonetworks as they struggled to find a way to condemn the attacks without drawing down further wrath from him.

From _him_. He’d done this. They were afraid of _him_ , _he’d_ destroyed entire worlds, this was _him_.

He truly was the son of a World-Eater.

He leaned heavily on the holoprojector, his eyes watering as he leaned too far forward and the bright lights shone up into his face, but he didn’t have the strength to stand by himself. He was a monster, a ruined husk of a monster, and he deserved this broken, wretched body. He still hadn’t gotten the necessary repairs done to his arm, and the constant electric zaps were making it all but impossible to sleep; they weren’t painful, nothing more than a grim annoyance, but they built up over time to be utterly relentless.

His left ear? Useless. His left eye? A blurry mess. His arm? Refusing more and more each day to respond to his movements, becoming more and more obvious to those in his company that he was struggling.

Paranoia warred with the overwhelming guilt, both refusing to let him consider the necessity for surgery. His father would take advantage of him in his moment of weakness if he consented to surgery, and his conscience would not allow him to improve himself while a hundred million or more lay dead and a hundred million more lay maimed because of him.

This had all been for the Alliance, all to stop the Alliance- he told himself it was good to stop the Alliance, to stop the terrorists, to stop his father’s minions. Millions and millions and millions dead, and none of them were to blame. None of them were involved. He’d killed so many people, for no reason.

He was every bit the monster his father was.

_We cannot let pride be our defining feature- not in a time where pride carves out empires, or when pride is responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of innocents._

He moaned, pressing a hand up to his head, as if he could dig his nails in between the scar tissue and reach in and wrench out the words. How could she have known, how could Kol’aya have realised years before they’d even met what the most brutal and cutting critique of him could be? Was the damned woman Force-sensitive on top of everything else, with insights into the future like a Scion?

_It just requires determination, and the conscious effort of waking up each day and saying ‘today I will do good’._

What was the point of choosing to do good, when the weight of his sins before now was so colossal as to be insurmountable? What did goodness and kindness and humility matter in the face of billions of deaths? Choosing to be good now would not bring back the dead, would not undo the hurt, would not bring back Thexan or give back his arm.

He hadn’t ever been given the _choice_ of goodness- he’d never been _intended_ for goodness.

He was a creature of pain and fear and war, consumed by self-loathing. There was nothing good within him.

The Alliance still flourished, and their attacks had grown in boldness since Nox’s escape. Undermining the Zakuulan currency with their slicers, sending black ops teams back into the streets of his cities, destroying their manufacturing facilities at home and off-world... nothing he did had even made them blink. He’d killed a hundred million people to stop them, and they’d only come at him faster.

Was this his father’s doing? Was Valkorion now in his rightful place as Lord of the Alliance, taking the place his lapdog Wrath had held for him for so long?

He bowed his head, something hysterical and agonised pushing up through his chest, and he fought back the urge to burst into panicked, desperate sobs.

He didn’t know what he was doing anymore.

He’d never felt more alone.

* * *

_Palace of the Eternal Dragon, Zakuul, Wild Space_

In the shadows above the war room, on the viewing platform that ran around the circumference of the circular chamber, Vaylin watched her brother break.

She stayed in the shadows, her face a mask of cold indifference as she watched Arcann rage and ramble and weep, sometimes voicing his thoughts aloud and other times lapsing into silence as he tormented himself over and over again with the same holovids and the same pictures.

She felt something warm and wet on her cheek, and she reached up to brush away the tears falling silently and unremarked.

It had not seemed so long ago, really, when she and Arcann had clung to one another, the only survivors of Valkorion’s malevolent parenting, able to understand one another in a way no one else could. Now here they were, with Arcann shutting himself off more and more each day, and Vaylin feeling increasingly like she was nothing more than his attack dog- good to turn against his enemies, but not the sort of creature you wanted to let on the furniture or near your guests.

She’d done everything he’d asked of her. When he’d made her High Justice, she’d taken to it with a fervour that would put the Sith to shame; when he’d insisted that it was right and true and just to murder the Scions, she had set aside her doubts and led the charge, encouraging her own Knights to slaughter their Scion brethren.

When he’d demanded that her loyal Knights fight to the death for the Exarch program, effectively halving their numbers and greatly reducing their capacity to meet the threat of the Alliance, she’d bit her tongue and looked away and called for death.

When he’d asked her to attack five planets in response to Father’s escape, she’d gleefully taken all of her fear and her rage and her helplessness out on her targets, revelling in the knowledge that this would hurt Father and that she was doing the right thing for Zakuul- only to come home to find Arcann almost gibbering with fear, consumed by his own guilt at what she had done.

She’d killed for him. She’d let him make her more of a monster than she already was.

She’d let him _use_ her.

Her hands were shaking as she stepped away from the railing and retreated deeper into the shadows, turning and making her way to the door as she left the sounds of his panic behind her. If Arcann would not provide the leadership Zakuul needed, then she would step up and make sure her people were protected.

In the hallway outside the war room, she pulled a holocomm from her belt and clicked in an access code, waiting for it to connect across the vast distances of space. She thought for a moment about trying to compose herself- when had she last brushed her hair? Cleaned her face?- but discarded the thought just as quickly. If anyone was fool enough to mention her appearance, they deserved what was coming to them.

But the woman on the other end of the line made no comment of the sort, saluting smartly as soon as she appeared on the holo in miniature. “Your Immortal Majesty,” Exarch Naisha Vyrint said, bowing her head respectfully. The eyepatch over her left eye caught the light briefly, as if she was standing near to a strong light source while taking the call; perhaps she was down in the heart of the Star Fortress, near to the sun reactor. “How may I serve the High Justice today?”

Vaylin sniffed, and tried her best not to let her voice crack as she lifted her chin. “The prisoner you took recently,” she said, “is he alive?”

“Councillor Hervoz? Yes, your Majesty. We extracted what information we required from him and have subdued him aboard our Star Fortress.”

“Excellent,” Vaylin said. “You are going to have another prisoner arrive in the next day or so- Colonel Hervoz will be joining you as well. I want both of them put aboard a single cruiser, and returned to Zakuul without escort-”

“Your Majesty, forgive me- did you say _without_ an escort?”

“I did.” She smiled, but she felt no glee with the expression. “We are going to deal with the Alliance, one way or another.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small note, just to make mention of the fact that I don't agree with Arcann's thought processes re: his disabilities at all. It's something that will be addressed in the text later on down the track, but the idea that he's a monster because he's disabled and he's disabled because he's a monster is an ouroboros eating it's own tail, and it's a terribly toxic mindset that we unfortunately see a lot of as a trope in media. So, just to bypass any concerns people might have there, I am going to be dealing with that in later chapters, but right now Arcann isn't in a very great place and his self-loathing reflects that. Let me know if you feel the chapter requires a trigger warning, though!
> 
> And secondly, thank you very much to highjustices/magicianlogician12 for the brief cameo of Naisha Vyrint! Naisha is the Exarch of Corellia in their amazing fic "Waiting for an Eclipse", a Vaylin-centric fic, and when I needed to have the Exarch of Corellia turn up to deal with the Hervoz clan, she was my first choice. Thank you Chorus!


	9. Chapter 9

_Alliance Headquarters, Odessen, Wild Space_

Lana already knew what the answer was going to be when she marched into the medbay, but she still planted her hands on her hips and surveyed the empty room regardless. There was a single staff member seated at the nurse’s station near to the door, a zabrak woman whose name escaped her at the moment; she glanced up at Lana’s arrival, starting to climb to her feet. “My Lord?” she began, using the Imperial form of address even though her accent twanged as Core Worlds. “Can I be of assistance?”

Lana waved her off, just staving off her irritation with immense control. “Lord Nox is not here?” she asked tersely, although she could see as plain as day that Kallathe was not in the room beyond. The bed in the critical care room was tidy, the sheets tucked in and the pillows plumped, and there were no personal effects strewn about as if she might have been in the shower.

The zabrak woman glanced over her shoulder, almost nervously. “Ah... no, Lord Nox departed some time ago,” she said carefully, doing an admirable job of keeping her tone neutral.

“Who approved that?”

Her eyes widened, as if in a panic, and she swallowed quite noticeably. “Lord Nox was deemed to be fit for discharge a few... um, some time ago,” she hedged.

Lana narrowed her eyes. “Specify the time period for me,” she said.

The poor woman looked like she wanted to just sink into the floor. “Yesterday,” she said weakly. “She has been returning for her mandated physical therapy sessions, but, um, she’s not been-”

“She hasn’t been in here for two whole _days?_ ”

The furniture rattled slightly at her yell, and the woman flinched, her hair fluttering as if a gust of wind had blown through the corridor suddenly. With immense difficulty, Lana took a deep breath, calming herself. “Would you care to explain to me where Lord Nox is, if she is not here, and she was approved for release several days ago?”

She nodded timidly. “Doctor Oggurobb approved her for discharge,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “I- I don’t know anything else, I just assumed he was communicating with the Alliance Council, I don’t-”

Lana didn’t stay to listen to the rest, turning sharply on her heel and marching back towards the lift. For Kallathe to have avoided her for multiple days meant that she’d been deliberately staying away from her, and for her to have managed that successfully meant that she’d been recruiting people into helping her, so that it wasn’t obvious that she’d left the hospital and was presumably staying in a private room in the personnel quarters now.

It meant she’d been _lying_.

Lana Beniko did not appreciate being lied to.

She paused, pressing a hand to the wall as she trembled with her rage; she clenched her hand into a fist several times, trying to relax. Clenching her jaw, she closed her eyes and ruthlessly tried to channel her anger, away from blind rage and towards something far more constructive. She reached out through the Force, letting it twist and writhe through her blood as she surged further out and out and out, racing through the dark shadows and the cold bright.

When she opened her eyes, she knew where Kallathe was.

She stormed through the underground fortress, a hurricane made flesh, and the mundane members of the Alliance scattered to get out of her way. When she made her way through the rudimentary military hangar- the arrival point for most of the enlisted troops and volunteers, before they were processed and assigned to one of the barracks or personnel districts- she saw Admiral Aygo on the edge of her peripheral vision, looking up with a scowl at the interruption she was causing. He wisely kept his mouth shut, though she could feel his displeasure, a seething murky orange in the bright reds and blacks of the Force.

The sunshine seemed weak outside, the greens and greys of Odessen somewhat insipid compared to the torrent of violent colour rioting within her. Boots clanging loudly on the bridge across the chasm, the sound echoing away into the depths towards the river far below; the same boots muffled by the grass of the meadow, as she skirted around Bejah’s bizarrely unique vessel where it rested without seeming to actually set down its weight at all.

The gravel pathway crunched beneath her as she walked, cresting the brief rise as she flexed her hands at her sides, determined not to stomp towards her with her fists clenched in anger; but she _was_ angry, she was so _unbelievably angry_ , to the point where it was actually bordering on incredulity.

On the far side of the small meadow, seated beneath the shade of a tree, sat Kallathe. Her eyes were closed, and she rested her hands on her knees as if she was in a state of deep meditation, but Lana knew her too well to believe that at a glance. And indeed, as she stormed across the grass towards her, she saw the glitter of gold as her eyes opened, and the weight of her gaze on her skin still made her shiver despite the anger she felt.

She came to a stop several feet from her, her stance wide and her arms crossed as she stared down at her; Kallathe had not even moved, and if anything, the corner of her mouth seemed to be turning up with a familiar smirk. Normally such a look would compromise her instantly, but the fact that Kallathe seemed to be utterly unconcerned by the rage she was easily projecting through the Force only frustrated her further.

Lana lifted her chin, and the smirk became fully realised. “Good afternoon, my love,” Kallathe said.

The flippancy infuriated her. “Is that all you have to say to me?” she said, spitting the words out at her feet.

Kallathe just raised both eyebrows at her, the piercings in both catching hints of the sunlight through the trees. “Yes,” she said, with all the confidence in the world. Once upon a time, Lana had found her unflinching confidence to be one of the things that had drawn her to her. Now it just angered her.

She snapped. “How _dare_ you frighten me like that again, sneaking out without telling me where to find you,” she snarled, gesturing angrily to emphasise her point. “After all the stress your little foray into the woods last week caused-”

“I didn’t realise I needed a permission slip in order to leave the infirmary,” Kallathe said dryly, but there was something sour in her tone.

“There is a difference between leaving the infirmary and absconding into the woods overnight!” Lana shouted. “When were you going to tell me you’d been discharged?”

Kallathe just stared at her, her expression unreadable.

Lana put her hands up to her head, just resisting the urge to scream in frustration. “Do you not care at all about my feelings on the matter? Does it not bother you in the slightest, how desperately frightening this whole endeavour has been?”

“You have told me repeatedly,” Kallathe said evenly, but her eyes were glittering.

“What does that even _mean?_ You’ve clearly no regard for my feelings, because here you are yet again, hiding in the wilderness- and you’ve been out here since _yesterday?_ ”

Kallathe bared her teeth at her. “ _Yes_ , Lana, I _have_.”

“Well then, what are you _doing?_ ”

The answer, when it came, blasted out of her like a clap of Kaasian thunder directly overhead. “I am keeping you all safe!” she shouted, the snarl of power in the words enough to bend the grass in the meadow and make Lana’s hair buffett back from her face. For a long moment, they stared at one another, Kallathe still seated on the ground and Lana standing several feet away; Kallathe’s posture was no longer relaxed, and her hands were clenched into fists on her knees. The tendrils on her chin were stiff and jagged, looking more like poisonous spurs than the soft ridges she knew them to be. Her jaw was tense, her shoulders even more so.

Lana pinched the bridge of her nose in one hand, the other on her hip. “What are you even talking about-”

“Don’t play daft, Lana, we both know you’re far too intelligent for that.”

“If you think Vitiate to be a threat, we can discuss our options-”

“No.”

She threw her arms into the air. “We cannot do anything if you hide yourself away and refuse to talk to me-”

“I am dealing with it-”

“ _Stop interrupting me!_ ” This time the power slammed out of her, a manifestation of her anger, and a nearby tree branch cracked and fell to the ground, the leaves smoking and blackened. Kallathe eyed it speculatively without flinching. “Do you think me unable to aid you? Do you think me to be some sort of wilting violet, unable to cope with the stark reality of our situation?”

“I think you don’t really understand what it is you’re trying to involve yourself in.”

Lana staggered back a step, the words cutting into her as if they’d struck a physical blow. “Do you think it was easy for me,” she said, her voice wobbling, “these last five years, do you think I did _nothing?_ Do you think so little of me that you think I did not suffer and bleed and weep for every day we were kept apart? That I did not _fight_ for you, with every breath in my body?”

Kallathe breathed in sharply, her nostrils flaring as if she were a predator scenting prey on the breeze. “Do you think that I did not?”

She frowned. “What?”

“Do you think that I did not fight for you, every single day, or that I did not suffer and bleed in my own way? Do you think I just lay there, helpless and frozen, like some fucking damsel in distress?” Even though she stood above her, even though Kallathe was shorter than her had she been on her feet, Lana could not help but feel like she was looming over her, her presence so much larger than life in everything she did. “I fought him, for five years I fought him with everything in me, and no matter what it costs me, _I will not let him win!_ ”

There was a snarl of power in her voice, like darkness made manifest, and for a moment it was like a very brief eclipse had plunged the world into an eerie half-light. Lana cocked her head to the side, brow furrowed, as a tugging suspicion began to build within her. Kallathe held her gaze, her golden, bloodied eyes unblinking.

“Kal,” she said carefully, tasting each syllable as if it was poison, “are you... _frightened?_ ”

The mere suggestion of it, on the surface, was utterly ludicrous- Kallathe was the most confident, most unflinching individual she had met in her entire life. Whether it was a part of her training under the disciplines of the Dread Masters, or whether it was an intrinsic part of who she was, Kallathe was bravado and ego given mortal form, her arrogance unbroken even in the face of Dark Council members and Dread Masters and World-Eating Emperors. She wasn’t even sure if Kallathe knew _how_ to be frightened.

It was one of the things that had drawn her to her, in the beginning- the notion that, in a cutthroat environment like the Empire, a woman could exist who was so untouched by the scheming and the pettiness of Sith politics that she walked with her head held high, taking delight in her own peacockish bravado... it was extraordinary. She spoke her mind in public. She did not bother with bodyguards. She was completely and utterly unafraid to live, precisely as she saw fit.

Until now. “Kal?” she asked again, when her first query went unanswered.

Kallathe looked away- and Lana felt her heart break.

“I could not live with myself, if I allowed harm to befall you,” Kallathe said quietly, the words stiff and awkward, as if it was a struggle to even speak them aloud. “Far better to break your heart than allow him to hurt you.”

She did not need to ask her who she meant; she sank slowly to her knees, wanting to reach for her but not sure how her approach would be received. “I am not so fragile that a ghost can scare me,” she said, “nor am I so cowardly that I will allow you to shut me out like this.”

Kallathe didn’t look at her, but she saw her fists clench ever so slightly on her knees.

“Is this what all of this is about?” Lana asked carefully. “Do you think you’re helping me by keeping me at arms length?”

She finally looked at her, this wretchedly proud woman who she loved so much, and the fear in her eyes knocked the wind from her lungs. She reached for her, shuffling forward in the grass so that she was kneeling before her, taking both of her hands in hers and twining their fingers together. “I am not afraid of him,” she whispered, “so if you need me to weather the worst of this storm for you, I will-”

“He is _so strong_ , Lana,” Kallathe said, voice quiet and agonized and _angry_. “I fought him with everything in me for five years, and it did nothing. I died a hundred thousand times or more, and he just laughed. I was-”

“Shh,” Lana said, squeezing her fingers in hers. Kallathe was not wearing the excessive amounts of jewellery she was used to from her- and it occurred to her that she hadn’t really worn a great deal besides her piercings since her rescue. Her fingers were bare, her knuckles ridged beneath her thumbs as she rubbed at them gently. “You’re alive. You’re still here, with me.”

“He showed me scenes like this over and over again,” Kallathe continued, not quite making eye contact. “Each time he twisted it a little more, trying a little harder to convince me that I wasn’t still trapped with him.”

The thought that- even now, after everything that had happened- Kallathe didn’t know whether to trust that she was at last safe was heartbreaking. “I’m here,” Lana said quietly. “This is real. You can trust me.”

“I can’t trust _him_ -”

“He’s not here right now,” Lana said, more firmly this time. “It’s just us. See, you can feel how warm my fingers are in yours, yes?” She rubbed her thumbs again across the back of her hand. “You can feel the calluses on my fingers from my lightsaber?”

Kallathe did not move for a long, long moment; finally she nodded, the movement stiff and uncomfortable.

It was a start. She took Kallathe’s hand and led it to the ground beside them. “You can feel the blades of grass, and the cold, dark grains of the soil,” she said, moving to scoop some of it across her fingertips. “You can feel the sunlight, dappled warmth fighting to make its way through the branches to you-”

“It could still be him-”

“But it could be _me_ ,” she said, drawing their hands together into the middle again and clasping them tight. “Darling- you can _trust_ me. Even if you can’t trust yourself, you can trust me.”

She took a shuddering breath, staring at the ground. “Lana,” she said quietly. “I need to ask you a question.”

Lana nodded, realising the difficulty Kallathe was experiencing in trying to allow herself this vulnerability. “You can always ask me anything,” she said.

“I need you to not laugh at me.”

The notion that anyone would dare to laugh at the great and awful Darth Nox was almost incomprehensible, but Lana continued to nod regardless. “Of course.”

Kallathe was silent for a few long beats, her nose crinkled as if with disgust or even self-loathing; that in itself was a warning, because she did not think Kallathe to be capable of self-loathing. “He- there was a great deal of...” She fumbled, and it was almost uneasy to see her struggle for words.

“Take your time.”

She breathed out loudly, the sound one of frustration. “Are we married?” she asked, the question blunt and direct and her voice unwavering. She didn’t look at her, though.

It was Lana’s time to hesitate now. “I...” She wanted to ask a thousand questions, she wanted to know immediately what she could possibly mean by that, but through sheer resilience she held her tongue. “No, we are not married.”

Kallathe looked at her. “Are you sure?”

“Quite certain,” she said, curiosity gnawing at her from the inside. “We- talked about it, before everything. I don’t think we ever... we had not formalised our arrangement. It was just an unspoken acknowledgement between us that we knew that what we had between us was more than just fleeting attraction.”

Kallathe continued to stare at her, her expression guarded; it hurt, in a secret part of her heart, to see her look at her with something bordering on confusion and suspicion. She was beginning to suspect she understood the reasons why, but that did not make it any easier on her heart. Finally she licked her lips, her breath catching for a moment. “We talked about it?” she asked.

Lana nodded. “Very much,” she said, her voice breaking slightly on the memories. “We had agreed upon the storm pagoda in the botanical gardens outside of Dromund Kaas- you wanted extravagant and public, and I wanted something more reserved and elegant, and it was a good compromise.”

“... why?”

“Why what?”

“Why was it a good compromise?”

Lana’s eyes crinkled at the corners as she fought not to just blurt out the most obvious question. “My love,” she said carefully, “I take it that this is his doing?”

Kallathe looked away again, her jaw tight. “Whatever process he uses to inhabit a body, it... consumes you from the inside out. I remember, when I was a girl, there was a species of wasp that my master kept in his gardens and his laboratories, because he found the poison it produced to be exquisitely efficient during torture.” Her hand drifted absently to her bare forearm, her fingers briefly covering a series of pale pink scars without any sort of acknowledgement that she had done so. “This wasp would lay its eggs in the living tissue of other creatures, so that they had a warm, safe berth with a guaranteed food source when they awoke. And these creatures would be forced to live in agony, while they were slowly devoured from the inside out, until finally they were just a hollow husk.”

Lana didn’t say anything, terrified that if she interrupted now, Kallathe would never open up to her again.

“He was fascinated with the process, and I must admit to some interest in it when I was a girl,” she continued, and then huffed out a bitter laugh. “I will say, I find the process far less intriguing when placed in the position of the creature.”

“You mean-”

“I will be frank, Lana,” Kallathe said, finally making eye contact again. Her eyes were bright, and Lana was horrified to realise it was with a sheen of tears. “I do not know where I end and where Vitiate begins. Over the last five years, he burrowed so deep inside my brain that I could not truly tell my own thoughts apart from his- I can remember his childhood with greater ease than I can remember my own, and some days, there are parts of me that I know have gone, but I cannot recall what they were to know what is missing in the first place.”

Lana felt her heart break as the first tears slid onto her lover’s cheeks. “Oh, Kal,” she said quietly.

“So forgive me if I cannot recall something as insignificant as a wedding venue,” Kallathe said, her words abruptly bitter and shaky. “Most days I struggle to remind myself that any memories I have of marriage and parenthood belong to someone else.”

She reached out and caught the tear with her finger, wiping it almost reverentially from Kallathe’s face. “The storm pagoda sits atop a cliff, overlooking the distant citadel,” she said, trying to choose her words with care. She was not given to extravagant turns of phrase generally, even despite her love of poetry- but for Kallathe, she would try. “The walls are made of glass, and a lightning conductor sits atop the dome, and whenever the storms thunder across the sky, the lightning surges through the pillars of the chamber, brilliant and terrifying and tamed for our pleasure.”

Something in Kallathe’s face relaxed ever so slightly, so she continued.

“It suited my need for privacy, and your desire for flamboyance,” she said, her fingers stroking along the line of her cheek as her thumb rubbed over the spur on her chin. It was softer now, not quite so rigid as it had appeared earlier. “We would stand against the window, with the dark and terrible jungles spread out before us, and in the distance, the silhouette of the citadel, as if the entirety of Kaas City stood to witness our union.”

Kallathe glanced away for a moment, as if drawing courage before speaking. “Had we made any arrangements?”

“Dates and such? No, we hadn’t gotten that far.” She stroked her cheek, cupping her face in her palm and breathing a little easier when she felt Kallathe relax into her touch. “You were to wear black, and I was to wear green. You wanted raw diamonds, with sharp edges and cloudy depths, and I wanted pearls.”

“You would look good in pearls.”

“But not in green?”

“You could wear the green earlier,” Kallathe said, her eyes glittering as a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “But I would prefer to have you wearing pearls and nothing else.”

Lana laughed softly. “You said something similar when we- I mean, before Zakuul,” she said. It was the wrong thing to say, because Kallathe’s expression grew shuttered, and she felt her swallow hard. “It’s alright! I like to hear it.”

It didn’t necessarily seem to placate her, because her jaw was still tense beneath her hand. “And we have no children?”

A thought that caused her no end of heartache, because they very well could have had children by now, had events not transpired as they had. “We do not,” she said quietly.

Kallathe grunted, some kind of expression of her displeasure. “You should not have put your life on hold for me,” she started to say, and Lana grasped her chin more firmly and made her face her.

“I did not sit atop a tower in Dromund Kaas these last five years, weeping into a handkerchief and wailing over your absence,” she said, a thread of steel in her voice. “I have lived, and I have loved, and I love you still. I have wasted _nothing_.”

“You could have had-”

“I _want_ you. I want a life with _you_. What I could have had is irrelevant.”

Kallathe looked at her, and she got the sense that she’d finally made some headway. “Were you always this insufferable, and I just can’t remember?” she said wryly.

Lana smiled at her. “We have the rest of our lives to find out.”

* * *

_Alliance Private Tenements Sector, Odessen, Wild Space_

Ona’la was humming to herself as she washed up the last of Anya’s breakfast plates- getting her to sit still for the entirety of a meal was an impossibility that neither she nor Thexan had managed yet, so even for a meal as simple as breakfast, it usually involved numerous half eaten attempts that were dismissed as ‘ _yucky_ ’ or left to go cold while she slipped away whenever her parents weren’t looking. Today’s discarded offerings included a cold and sludgy bowl of porridge, a half-chewed slice of meiloorun, a child-sized waffle with muja-jam on it with perhaps three bites taken out of it, and a piece of grain toast that had been upended onto the floor at some point when Ona’la had her back turned.

Despite how much the wasted food exasperated her, Ona’la was determined to let Anya eat at her own pace, and as much or as little as she desired. Too many memories of her own malnourished childhood in the mines, the effects of which still haunted her today, over two decades after her rescue by the Jedi. As long as Anya was happy and eating what she needed to stay healthy, Ona’la couldn’t find it in herself to be upset about her pickiness.

She had inherited her father’s fondness for spicy flavours, the hotter the better. It made bribing her easier, as long as they had some pepper chocolate on hand, or a bowl of the Zakuulan pappocas smothered in sweet chilli powder.

She hoped Senya had enough of both to see them through the day.

The front door to the apartment slid open, and she smiled to herself, listening for the familiar footsteps on the tiled floor behind her; a moment later and she felt Thexan’s presence as he entered the little kitchenette, and she turned to greet him, reaching for a towel to dry her hands on.

Even now, after all these years, her heart still skipped a little when she looked at him- his hair was ruffled in a way that seemed to suggest he’d been wrestling with Anya, and his chin was faintly coloured with stubble, which she knew from experience would be delightfully coarse on her fingers if she were to take his face in her hands. It was still a wonder to her, how hair could be both soft and scratchy, and he knew her well enough by now to give her plenty of opportunity to play before he shaved or had his hair cut.

He looked tired, but he looked happy, and she couldn’t have asked for anything more. “Was she alright?” she asked.

He nodded. “She was excited, really- I don’t think she even noticed when I left.”

“Are we talking about Anya, or about your mother?”

He grinned. “Could be either,” he said. “Is Jaelin...?”

Ona’la nodded back towards the children’s room. “She fell asleep in her chair, so I’ve put her down for a nap.”

“She didn’t sleep very well last night.”

“No, I think that’s why she’s a little cranky this morning. Hopefully getting a rest now will do her some good.” She set the towel down on the bench as Thexan ambled casually towards her, fighting the urge to grin stupidly at his silliness. “Mm? Something I can do for you?”

“So,” he said, sliding his arms around her waist as she looped her arms around his neck, “we happen to be in a very unique position right now.”

Ona’la smiled. “Oh? And what would that be, your Highness?”

Thexan’s grin made her feel as giddy and delighted today as it had five years ago when he had first crashed into her life. “Well, Battlemaster,” he said, swaying slightly almost as if they were dancing in the middle of the room, “it has come to my attention that one of our daughters is spending the day with her grandmother.”

“Well, goodness me. So she is.”

“And our other daughter is fast asleep right now.”

“An excellent observation.”

He giggled, and she had to bite her lip not to follow suit. “Which leads me to the conclusion that we have an hour, possibly two, all to ourselves with no interruptions.”

She couldn’t help herself- she giggled, her cheeks hurting from the strain of holding it in. “What a marvellous observation, your Highness,” she said, swaying in time with him; she could feel his fingers toying with the ends of her lekku, and she shivered in delight. “What do you propose we do about this unanticipated solitude?”

He paused, as if for dramatic effect. “Bath or nap?” he said finally.

Ona’la’s grin widened. “We could take a nap in the bath,” she said.

His entire face lit up. “This is why I love you,” he said, giggling as he kissed her. “I’ll get the bath going-”

“I already ran the bath while you were dropping off Anya.”

“And _that_ is why I married you!” He scooped her up abruptly, and she had to bite back the shriek of laughter that almost escaped her, hiding her face against his shoulder. “I have the cleverest, most wonderful wife-”

“You are going to wake Jaelin!” she said, trying so hard not to laugh as he manhandled her over his shoulder. “Thexan!”

“-the most brave and beautiful-”

“Can you at least go past the bedroom so I can pick up the baby monitor?” she said against his back, her lekku dangling down towards his knees.

“-the most thoughtful, with far more common sense than me,” he said, diverting past the bedroom as requested and scooping up the little device that would alert them if Jaelin woke up any time soon.

“You’re an absolute menace.”

He slung her back onto her feet once they were in the refresher, beaming cheekily at her. “Incorrect,” he said, “I am the cleverest man in existence, because I was smart enough to marry the best woman in existence.”

She grabbed the front of his shirt and pretended to pull him in menacingly, until their noses were touching. “You’re lucky you’re so cute,” she said.

He kissed her, a tiny peck, and they both burst into giggles, desperately trying to stifle the noise so as not to wake the baby one room over. She set the monitor down on the small table as Thexan stripped off, the two of them negotiating the tiny space like it was some kind of dance; granted, these lodgings were bigger than their home on Rishi, but luxurious abundance of space was not something in great abundance on what was essentially a military base. The fact that they’d been granted a whole family apartment in the limited availability was such a blessing.

Thexan sighed happily as he settled in the water, and he made no secret of the fact that he was admiring her as she removed her own clothes. The bath wasn’t really large enough for two people to bathe comfortably, but given that they were just going to cuddle up with no intention of bathing properly, it didn’t really matter; he lifted a hand to offer to her for balance as she climbed in, awkwardly trying to step around him without falling over. She sank down gratefully into the water- mostly on top of him, since there wasn’t room to lie side by side- and some of the water sloshed out onto the floor as she squished in with him.

She nestled down on his chest as his arms went around her, her face buried against his neck as their legs tangled together beneath the water; she was long past the point where the sensation of skin against skin made her collapse into jelly, but he was warm and the hair on his body was delightful, and she really couldn’t ask for anything more.

For a few long minutes, they lay silently in the water together, eyes closed as they breathed as one; she could feel his heart beating beneath her cheek, and it was perhaps the most comforting sound in the galaxy for her. The water was warm, slightly scented with an oil she’d added while waiting for him to return, and she was so relaxed that she could easily have melted into a gooey puddle without his arms around her.

“I’m falling asleep,” he muttered, from somewhere above her, and she chuckled.

“Wasn’t that the plan?”

“When was the last time we got some time to ourselves without the imminent fear that Anya could be in the process of setting something on fire.”

Ona’la smiled against his skin. “To be fair, she could still be doing that-”

He groaned, and she giggled.

“-but right now, that would be Senya’s problem.”

“ _I_ never set fires when _I_ was a child,” he said, with exaggerated petulance.

She kissed the little divot in his shoulder, admiring the way the water droplets traced over and around it. “I’m sure you were nothing but a delight for everyone involved she said.”

They lapsed into silence again, but Thexan’s hand smoothed slowly up and down her back, the motion lulling her closer towards sleep. She found it a little harder to snooze when his fingers absently toyed with the end of her lekku, letting it curl around his finger before slipping free only to tease it again until it instinctively coiled back around it the moment he held still. She smiled, eyes closed, and murmured “There’s something on your mind.”

“Maybe I’m just enjoying myself.”

“Mhmm.”

“You like to play with my stubble,” he said pointedly.

She shifted a little, the water sloshing about as she adjusted herself in the narrow space so that she could rub her cheek against his. “But it’s so _nice_ ,” she said, enraptured by the scratchy sensation.

He chuckled, and she could feel it rumble through her own skin. “I rest my case,” he said.

“Mm, but you didn’t answer my question,” she said, kissing the corner of his jaw

“You didn’t ask a question.”

She rested her chin on her hands, and her hands on his chest. “You’re insufferable,” she said, looking up into his stormy blue eyes. Said eyes were crinkled with amusement as she looked up at him, and his expression as he gazed at her was soft and warm, not quite sexual but it made her shiver all the same. “Tell me.”

A flicker of something flashed through the stormy depths- grief, maybe, or shame-, and he looked away. “It’s nothing,” he murmured, running a hand down the curve of her lek until she sighed happily. “I don’t want to ruin this.”

“Nothing you could say would ruin this,” she countered, tracing aimless shapes on his skin with her fingertip. “Thexan.”

“Mm.”

“ _Freykaa_.” She kissed his shoulder again. “Talk to me.”

He sighed, tipping his head back to rest against the edge of the bath. “It’s just... Arcann. And Vaylin, too.”

She reached down through the water and found his hand, threading their fingers together and resting their hands on his chest. “You’re worried about them,” she said quietly.

“Of course I’m worried about them,” he said, his voice just as quiet, as if they were afraid of being overhead. “I’m never not worried about them.”

“But something has changed.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, before finally tilting his head back down to make eye contact with her again. “When I left, Anya was asking mother about them,” he said. “And I just... I can’t...”

She smoothed her hand over his chest. “Take your time.”

Thexan was silent for a long moment, as if gathering his thoughts. “I think at some point, I have to accept the fact that the brother and the sister I remember from my childhood are gone, and are not coming back,” he said finally. “The stories Anya was asking for- the people in those stories are dead. They aren’t coming back-”

“Shh,” she said, instantly reaching up to cup his cheek. “Freykaa.”

“I hate myself for losing faith, love, I hate it so much, but I can’t...” He cut himself off, his jaw working as if he was trying to swallow down some emotion that was too large and too ugly for the intimacy of the moment. “Kol’aya said something to me, a few weeks ago, about family being capable of evil doesn’t make them suddenly not your family anymore, and I’m not trying to disown them, or anything, but...”

“But?”

“But at what point do I need to accept that the man my brother has chosen to become isn’t worth my time or my hope? At what point do I stop reaching out to him, or instilling this- this _fantasy_ in our daughter that she has an aunt and uncle who love her and who are good people worthy of her love, when in fact I don’t think they’ve been that for a long time?”

Ona’la paused, to see that he had truly finished speaking, but also to collect her thoughts before responding. “You know, it’s interesting- Kol’aya and I had a similar discussion a few years ago, back on Rishi. I asked her about her interest in Arcann’s prosthetics, and it devolved into a... less than cordial encounter, but she asked the same question. About how I could argue in their favour after everything they’d done.”

“And did you tell her that you see only light and goodness in everyone regardless of who they are, to the point that your own optimism eventually wears them down?”

He was grinning, so the barb didn’t land, and she poked her tongue out at him in response. “She actually said something that was quite difficult for me, at the time,” she continued.

His expression sobered. “Oh?”

She nodded. “She asked if my thoughts on Vitiate had changed, now that I knew he was your father,” she said, “and more specifically, she asked if I would still choose to spare him if he threatened our daughter.”

Thexan went rigid beneath her, his face frozen with fear and anger, and she hurriedly reached up to his face. “Freykaa, it’s alright,” she said. “Anya is safe, and we’ve talked to her about him-”

“Even the thought of him hurting her like he hurt me-”

“I know, Thexan, I know. She’s safe.”

He shuddered, the tension bleeding out of him slowly. “Knowing that he’s here on Odessen, in whatever capacity he exists in within Lord Nox, it’s just...”

She cradled his cheek in her hand, leaning up slightly to kiss him. “I know,” she said softly. “And you’re safe too, my love. He isn’t going to hurt you anymore either.”

He kissed her back, with a little more urgency in his motions, and he took her hand in his, squeezing tight. “If I thought it would end him for good, I would kill Nox without hesitation,” he said. “To think that he’s so close makes it hard to sleep at night.”

Ona’la shushed him gently, resting her forehead against his. “Her question haunted me for weeks afterward, because I don’t know what my answer would be,” she said. “I would give anything to keep you all safe, but if I were to kill him because he threatened my child when I refused to kill him when he threatened the lives of trillions, what manner of person does that make me? How selfish, how narcissistic, if I place my morals above the lives of others, but presume the safety of my family to be of greater importance?”

Thexan kissed her again. “I would not ask you to make that choice,” he said, “because I would never want you to be in a position where he could threaten you ever again.”

“But then I am simply asking others to make that same sacrifice, and why do I have the luxury of demanding others make such a choice and spare me the pain of it?”

He closed his eyes, as if in pain, and she held him tight. “You are the greatest light and the greatest optimist I have ever known,” he said quietly. “You are the reason I am alive, and the reason I even have hope at all. It is only because of your relentless faith that I have not given up on Arcann and Vaylin already.”

It made her heart ache to hear such misery in his voice. “If they are alive, there is still the possibility of change,” she whispered. “As long as they live, they have the opportunity to choose a different path- and maybe they just need someone to show them that path, like I did with you.”

“I’m not as strong as you, love,” he whispered in response.

“You are, far more than you know it.” She wanted to impart her conviction to him, but she didn’t want to give him false hope. He had to believe on his own terms. “I will hold your hand so that you can reach for them with the other.”

He was silent for a long, long time, enough so that she had to wonder whether the warmth of the bath had finally gotten to him and he had dozed off. But finally, so quietly that she could barely hear it, she heard him murmur “I love you Ona’la.”

“I love you too, Thexan.”

“You make me want to believe.”

She smiled, almost sadly. “As long as we have hope, there’s still a chance.”

* * *

_Alliance Force Enclave, Odessen, Wild Space_

Navin barely got his staff up in time to block the blow as it streaked towards his head, grunting with the effort of keeping his opponent from pushing in closer for the winning point. His feet skidded an inch or so against the floor, as he fought to keep his balance, and with the last of his energy, he pushed heavily to try to overbalance his opponent while he ducked low. He swung around, not quite rolling but definitely skidding hard enough that he felt the spot on his hip that was definitely going to have a bruise by evening, and brought his staff up for a strike-

Only to find the end of another staff levelled perhaps an inch or so from his cheek, close enough so that he scarcely had time to blink in shock before it was tapped lightly against his face.

“And that’s the kill,” Lady Amaara said, rising from her attack stance and offering him a hand to help him back to his feet. With a sigh of resignation, he took the togruta woman’s hand, trying to hide his wince from the younglings gathered with wide eyes along the edge of the training mat. There were easily thirty or forty of them, far more than he was used to in a lesson, but the mixed nature of Odessen made it somewhat of a necessity to fit as many students in at a time- they had no idea at any given moment how long the students would be safe in their care, and how long they had until the rest of the galaxy came knocking, either in the form of Zakuul or the traditional Jedi-Sith rivalry. Some of the children were definitely more likely to thrive in one environment than the other, but that wasn’t going to stop them from teaching them as many schools as thought before they were inevitably separated and told to consider one another enemies again. To that end, it meant that every available Force-user was considered fair game as far as teachers went, and Navin was quite painfully aware of the burden he and his Green Jedi were on the resources of the Alliance, so that meant he found himself volunteering for extra sessions where possible to assuage the guilt and earn a place for his people.

He wished that didn’t mean he needed to contribute to physical combat classes.

He leaned heavily on his staff while he caught his breath, while Amaara addressed the younglings. “The Force imbues us with great physical prowess and potential, far beyond that of our peers,” she said, looking no more winded than she might have had she walked across the room, “but that does not mean that we are immediately superior. Whether Jedi or Sith, Zakuulan or otherwise, our bodies require training just as our minds do, if we are to harness our full potential.”

One of the younglings at the front raised himself up on his knees, arm stretched into the air. “Master?”

“Yes, Bhrak?”

“Does Master Hervoz not train? Is that why you beat him?”

Navin hid his wince as Amaara smiled gently, but he could feel her amusement. “Master Hervoz is one of our greatest historians and custodians, and he fought bravely in the Battle of Corellia- he trains very hard-”

He grunted. “My ego is already bruised, Amaara, I’m sure you hardly need to sugar coat it for them.”

“Sometimes, it is easy to think that because we have the Force, that we are unbeatable,” she continued, carefully ignoring his comments. “That is not the case at all- if anything, we must be vigilant not to fall into the trap of believing that the Force will not allow us to come to harm, because that is a path to sloth and carelessness.”

“Master Amaara?”

“Yes, Unry?”

“I don’t like sloths, so I won’t go down that path.”

“Are we going to a zoo?” another one said, and then there was a excited titter rushing through the crowd. “I wanna see the sloths!”

He might’ve taken pity on Amaara if she hadn’t just soundly trounced him in front of the same crowd of excitable children, so instead he just leaned on his staff and tried not to laugh as she closed her eyes for a moment as if gathering herself. “Alright, let’s just go back to our balance exercises,” she said after a second of contemplation. “Everybody pair up and get one of the foam balls from the exercise locker. I want you to use the Force to pass it back and forth, and remember- no throwing!”

They watched as the younglings scrambled to get set up, and he set aside his wounded pride after a moment to help with the inevitable squabbles and tears that came from balls being stolen and pairings being determined on the ground to exclude others; he travelled up and down the lines in the opposite direction to Amaara, patiently helping the children to settle in and firmly putting an end to any nastiness. Maybe the Sith teachers encouraged them to be more competitive in their lessons, but he wasn’t exactly interested in sitting in on those classes to find out.

Eventually, with the younglings settled into the routine of the exercise, Lady Amaara wandered over to him and handed him a towel. “You did well,” she said, holding a bottle of water at the ready for him.

Navin scrubbed the towel over his face, hoping that the red in his cheeks would be taken for exertion and not embarrassment. “It’s kind of you to lie, Lady,” he said, draping it around his neck. He’d discarded his heavier robes before the training session had begun, and he felt the very pointed difference between his rather flabby upper arms and Lady Amaara’s far more toned biceps very keenly. He crossed his arms hard, hoping that nobody else had noticed his miserable physical condition- or lack thereof.

But Lady Amaara just smiled. “No lie.” she said. “It would be far more unkind of me to lie. I know that martial prowess is not your forte, and it was still incredibly good of you to volunteer for these lessons.”

He took the water bottle as she held it out. “Perhaps,” he admitted grudgingly, taking a long swallow.

“The younglings need role models of all kinds, and not all of them will become great warriors of legend.” Her smile was amused. “And besides, they were not the only ones to appreciate your efforts.”

“What...?” He turned at her nodded gesture, to find Koth standing beside the entrance to the enclave, leaning against the wall with arms crossed and an approving look on his face. Navin immediately choked on the mouthful of water, trying to hide it in the towel as it dribbled down his neck. “Seven stars, how long has he been there?”

“Long enough,” Amaara said, smiling broadly. She nodded past his shoulder, as if in greeting, and then said loudly “Good afternoon, Captain. What brings you to our humble enclave?”

“Afternoon, ma’am,” Koth said, as he drew up alongside them. “I’m afraid you’ve got me at a bit of a disadvantage, I’m not sure we’ve met...?” He looked pointedly at him, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth in a way that made Navin’s stomach flutter.

“Oh, uh, of course,” he said, clearing his throat and adopting a more formal tone. “Captain Vortena, allow me to introduce Lady Amaara of Kiros, the Jedi High Justice and former Guardian of the Tython Enclave.”

Koth’s smile wavered ever so slightly, something wary coming into his expression. “High Justice?” he asked, his tone light, but there was a hesitance in his eyes.

But Amaara had apparently been exposed to this problem already, and only smiled at him. “Our research has led me to believe that the Jedi use of the term predates the Zakuulan one, but I can understand the concern,” she said. “Generally it is not a position that calls for a great deal of interaction with the public.”

“So, what, you’re like... Internal Affairs?”

Her smile was cryptic. “You could say that,” she said. “I understand that you were the pilot on the mission to rescue Lord Nox?”

He relaxed noticeably, and Navin internally breathed a sigh of relief. “Yeah, that was me.”

“You have my thanks for returning Master Xo to us safely- she is a dear friend, and it warms my heart to see her flourishing now.”

“Uhh... you’re welcome?”

The awkwardness of the moment was broken as Draemi wandered up to the group, loudly popping a huge brightgum bubble as she stopped beside him. Navin didn’t have the energy to scold her for such lax attention to manners, so he just sighed.

Koth, however, grinned at her. “Hey, Hot Sauce,” he said cheerfully.

With her customary deadpan expression, Draemi said “Hey, Big Boy.”

Navin rather desperately wanted to sink into the floor.

Draemi, unconcerned with how she embarrassed him, continued. “What you doing slumming it down here with the wizards?” she asked.

Koth’s grin eased away, into a more serious expression. “I needed to have a word to Master Hervoz, but I, uh, didn’t want to interrupt the kiddies,” he said, gesturing towards the rows of younglings who were already beginning to lapse in their attention to the exercises. As if on cue, a ball went sailing through the air past them all, definitely not being guided by the Force.

Amaara turned to Draemi. “Miss Draemi, could I engage your assistance with the younglings?”

Draemi, never one to be overly expressive, nodded. “I don’t think we’ll need you for this, Master,” she said, very pointedly turning her back on Navin. He could have sworn he’d seen her blink slowly too, the chiss equivalent of rolling her eyes.

Navin, desperately wishing he’d had time to dress in more sensible clothing instead of just his sweat-soaked undershirt, turned to Koth with a forced smile. “What can I do for you, Captain?” he asked.

Koth just looked vaguely alarmed. “Got a lot of teeth going on there,” he said, gesturing to his own mouth as if to illustrate the point. “You, uh- you hurting or something?”

 _Shit_. “I, uh...” He closed his eyes for a moment. “That was a smile?”

“... huh.”

The floor wasn’t eating him, and he had a terrible feeling that the other members using the facilities in the enclave were trying to eavesdrop on them- Draemi foremost among them. He thrust an arm out, almost punching Koth by accident as he pointed towards the door. “Shall we, uh...?”

‘Hm? Oh, yeah, of course.”

Koth fell in beside him as they walked, and the two of them remained silent until they’d left the enclave behind them. The hallways were not as crowded, but voices carried in the stone corridors, so Koth was good enough to direct him upstairs, towards an empty corner of the public access platform. His hand was warm on his elbow as he guided him to a stop, and Navin did his best not to shiver. “So,” he said conversationally, his eyes crinkled with faint concern as he looked at him at last, “I figure you’ve heard all about the council meeting that went on this morning.”

Navin gritted his teeth and glanced away. “What the Alliance Council elects to do is no concern of mine,” he started to say, the words memorised from how often he’d repeated them to himself and with no small measure of bitterness laced through the syllables, “I am simply grateful that they would take my Order in-”

“Hey, hey, ease up there big boy,” Koth said, putting a hand back on his arm. Oh, the sleeveless undershirt was definitely not such a good idea, because now he could feel it whenever Koth put his hands on him- the warmth and the rough calloused fingers, enough to make him weak-kneed like a teenage boy again. “It’s not all doom and gloom.”

“I am aware that the council were discussing my family, and I am equally aware that I was given explicit instructions not to attend, despite risking my life to save Lord Nox-”

“The Council agreed to try a rescue attempt,” Koth said, cutting him off.

Navin stuttered to a halt, staring at him. “What?” he asked, utterly flabbergasted.

Koth nodded, a hand on his other arm now, as if he meant to shake him to interrupt him. “There was a bit of debate on the matter, and there seems to be a bit of a consensus that this is very likely a trap of some kind, but the Lord Wrath and the rest agreed that it was worth the risk,” he said, and then he grinned. “We’re going to get your father and your sister back, Navin.”

He stared at him.

And then he lunged forward and kissed him.

As soon as his lips touched his, common sense took a hold of him again, and he lurched backwards with apologies babbling out of him instantly. “Seven stars, I am so sorry-”

Koth put a hand on the back of his head and pulled him back in, returning the kiss just as soundly. For a moment, Navin felt as if his whole body had ascended to a higher plane, leaving him only as a being of sensation- and then he heard someone let out a whoop from nearby, followed by someone else cheering.

They broke apart again, Koth laughing as he looked past Navin’s shoulder towards the interruption; several other Zakuulan renegades whom he recognised as Koth’s flight crew stood by the door to the market cantina, and one of them applauded extravagantly when they looked over at them. “Tora’s gonna be fuckin’ stoked, cap,” one of them called. “She just won the pot!”

“Oh yeah? Tell her she owes me at least half, then,” Koth said, grinning before he looked back to Navin. “So, uh... I hadn’t even gotten to the good news yet.”

“Force preserve me, should I be sitting down for this?”

“No, but I’m wondering what the response will be to this, if I get a kiss just from telling you they’re getting rescued,” he said, and Navin’s face flamed as he winked at him. “The strike team is leaving tonight in the Gravestone to get in position for an ambush, and I’m going as the pilot. Just wanted to let you know before I vanished into thin air.”

Navin couldn’t focus his thoughts for more than a second in any direction. “Tonight?” he said, latching onto the first word he could.

“Yeah. they’re trying to keep it under wraps, just to avoid the potential for leaks,” he said.

“There are leaks?”

“No, it’s just-” He shook his head, laughing. “You’re way more jittery than I was expecting.”

“What, you were expecting me to take this with a- a solemn nod and a handshake?”

“I can think of other things we can do with our hands,” Koth said, eyes sparkling with wicked merriment, and as Navin spluttered in shock, he said “Too much?”

Navin kissed him again, trying to ignore the gleeful cheers and catcalls that came from behind them as he did so. “Come back safe, and we can talk about that- um, those other things you said.”

Koth laughed, and pretended to sketch a lazy salute. “Sir, yes sir.”

* * *

_New Kalikori, Odessen, Wild Space_

Kol stood before her holocomm on her desk, pacing backwards and forwards as she worked up the courage to press send. It was taunting her, she knew it was. There had to be a reason it was so hard to just call up an old friend, something other than her chronic social anxiety at least. She was a grown woman, she was a celebrated surgeon and teacher, she shouldn’t have so much trouble just placing a damn call.

She’d walked up to the desk at least four times now, only to lose her nerve and walk away rapidly, flexing her hands at her sides to try and displace the nervous energy in her.

It was just a call. It was just Mako. She’d lived with Mako for six months when Izzy had been on the run from the Republic.

_Make the damn call, Torr._

She slammed her fingers down on the button before she could talk herself out of it again, and immediately crossed her arms over herself, as if to guard herself. It buzzed for a few long moments, connecting over the long distance of space- Odessen to Nar Shaddaa was about the longest call she’d ever placed, and she was hedging her bets on Mako being able to outwit the security protocols of the Alliance-

_One step at a time, Torr._

The call connected, and she held her breath as she waited for the image to form. There was a click, and then Mako appeared before her, small and blue and a little staticy as she stood with one hand on her hip.

“Kol’aya Torr, girl, you did _not_ just vanish on me without warning several months ago,” she said archly.

Kol breathed out with a laugh. “Good to see you too, Mako,”

“Do you know what kind of bounties are out on you at the moment? Two words- In. Sane.”

“That’s one word, Mako.”

“If I hadn’t heard from Dia that you ran off with the Alliance, I would’ve thought you’d been kidnapped or something.”

Kol winced.

Mako’s face blanched. “Oh, shit Kol, sorry! I didn’t mean it like-”

“It’s alright,” she said quickly. “Look, can I ask a favour?”

“Anything, girl, just ask and I’ll make it happen.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay, so... you know I’m with the Alliance, yeah?”

“I would’ve figured as much, but yeah, Elsie spoke to Izzy a couple days ago.”

Kol nodded. “You got a lock on my connection at the moment?”

“Of course.”

“I need you to slice in a secure line, so that I can do things without going through their monitored channels.”

Mako was silent for a good few beats, a small frown appearing on her forehead as she considered the request. “Y’all doing okay over there, Kol?” she asked finally, her voice quiet.

She attempted a weak smile. “Let’s just say I’m used to a little less oversight in my day to day.”

“If you talked to Izzy-”

“Izzy doesn’t need to know,” she said quickly, her voice a little harsher than she intended. Mako just looked at her, and she sighed. “Can you do it, Mako?”

“Course I can do it- there ain’t a network in the galaxy that can outwit me.” She turned to the side, her fingers moving over a keyboard that Kol couldn’t quite see in the frame of the call. “Might take me awhile- anything you need asap?”

“I need to pay a couple of outstanding accounts.”

Mako snorted. “I can do that for you, be faster for me to get into your bank files than through Alliance firewalls- what do you need?”

Kol tried to think of a better way to word it, but there wasn’t anything she could think of other than the truth. “I owe Des and Moori for the work on... on that arm we were building,” she finished lamely.

Mako’s fingers paused, and she looked over at her with a flat expression on her face. “Arcann’s arm?”

“I still owe them money Mako, goddess-”

“Izzy said you met him on Asylum.”

“Fucking hell, does everyone talk about me behind my back like they think I’m made of glass?”

Mako didn’t say anything, but the look in her eyes spoke leagues. “How much do you owe them?” she asked finally, her voice quiet and toneless.

Kol closed her eyes, rubbing at her forehead. “I’ve got a copy of the invoices in my banking files,” she said. “Just... pay them in full with a large tip. Maybe then they’ll forgive me for being late with the payments.”

“What do you want me to do about the arm itself?” Mako said casually.

“I’m assuming Moori still has it, he was building it.”

Mako made a noncommittal noise. “I’ll see if he can get it sent over to Elsie’s place,” she said.

“I’d appreciate it, Mako.”

“You never know, it could fit someone else, won’t go to waste.”

Kol gritted her teeth. “Thanks, Mako,” she said, a little more forced this time.

“I’ll let you know when I’ve got the secure line worked out- might take a day or so.”

She could feel a headache coming on just from this short conversation. “I really appreciate it, Mako,” she said quietly.

“Hey.” She looked up to see Mako looking at her, her expression solemn. “I’m real glad you’re okay, Kol. It’s good to see you.”

She smiled weakly. “It’s good to see you too, Mako.”

“Take care, okay? I’ll be in touch.”

The call disconnected, and Kol was left standing alone in the clinic, the sounds of the twi’lek village outside making her feel even more detached from herself. She felt miserably, terrifyingly alone, and the only choice in her life that she kept returning to kept alienating her from the few people she actually cared about.

She pulled open the drawer in the desk and reached inside for the datapad inside, clicking it on as she lifted it to read. A schematic appeared on the screen, and as she flicked through the data, it settled on the face of a man she knew far too well after Asylum.

Arcann’s golden eye stared up at her out of the screen, and she shivered. “What are you doing, Torr?” she asked.

She didn’t have an answer.


	10. Chapter 10

_Palace of the Eternal Dragon, Zakuul, Wild Space_

“ _Vaylin!_ ”

The shout thundered through the air, enough to make the servants run for cover and the ambient tension in the palace crackle like unspent lightning. There were cracks, deep fissures running through the foundation of Zakuul’s dominance of the galaxy, chips and flecks flaking away as though the degradation of their empire was taking place over centuries, and not mere months. They were supposed to pretend that it was business as normal, that the Eternal Throne was exactly that. Eternal and gilded, untouched by the hands of mortals.

If Zakuul was truly in the hands of the gods, then the gods had gone mad.

Those that weren’t dead, anyway.

Vaylin, from where she sat cross-legged on the balustrade of the highest public balcony, cracked open an eye. Her back was to the drop down into the plaza below, and she could feel the wind billowing up from the depths of the city and pushing at her from behind. To someone more mundane, it would perhaps have been terrifying to sit so close to death, to have no safety net to stop them from plummeting to their doom far, far below. She was _not_ mundane, however, and she had very little regard for death.

Or for her brother’s temper.

Arcann stormed towards her through the great portal from the ballroom, the very air around him seething and shifting like heat lines in the distance on a hot day. His one visible eye burned like molten gold, like metal heated to a thousand degrees until it had become liquid. It was all very impressive, she supposed, if one feared that sort of thing.

As he drew closer, she called out “Careful, brother- scowl like that for too long and you’ll melt your face off. Oh wait, too late.”

“What have you _done?_ ” he roared, the power behind the sound so forceful that she felt it push at her, like a gust of wind. Her hood flew backwards, exposing the matted, greasy braid her hair was tied into and she scowled, tugging it back down low over her face.

“You’ll have to be more specific than that-”

“You know _exactly_ what I’m talking about,” he said, drawing to a halt before her; if he wanted to, he could reach out and push her backwards, either physically or with the Force. It wouldn’t achieve much, because she could easily survive the fall despite the height, but if she pushed his tantrum too far... “The Republic prisoners-”

“We have _so many_ prisoners, brother dear.”

She could feel the hair on her arms standing on end at the wild power roiling around him as his temper grew. “Are you playing dumb for a reason, Vaylin? Is this another of your childish games?”

She bared her teeth at him. “I am merely your attack dog, my dear Emperor,” she said, spitting the words at his feet. “I am too stupid for anything more than that, so whatever you think me capable of-”

“ _Stop it!_ ”

“Oh, was that too much of an opinion for an attack dog to have? My apologies, your Majesty-”

He lunged forward and grabbed her by the shoulders, and she flinched, eyes snapping shut at the moment of panic in her belly. “Why are you _doing_ this?”

She took a deep breath, waiting for the panic of a frightened little girl to let go of the vice it had around her throat. “Take your hands off me, brother,” she said, proud of the fact that her voice did not waver.

She didn’t open her eyes at all, but after a moment she felt him release her, and she reached up to rub at the place where he had gripped her too tight. The silence between them was painful and ugly, and she wondered how many servants were watching secretly from the windows, how many of their adoring public were passing through the plaza down below, only to bear witness to the ugliness of their spat. It almost made her laugh, to think of it- the beloved royal siblings, fallen so far from the noble parentage so as to be nothing but feral brats, tearing at each other in the middle of The Spire.

“You sent the orders for Colonel Hervoz and her father to be transferred from the Core Worlds,” Arcann said finally, his words clipped and sharp, evidence of the anger that he was only scarcely containing.

It was not a question so much as a statement, but she still answered it as one. “Yes, I did,” she said simply, opening her eyes again.

His visible eye was narrowed, and she could feel the suspicion bleeding off of him. “Why?” he asked. “They were valuable leverage against the Republic and the Alliance-”

“The Republic is so eager to distract you that they would hand over their heads of state should you ask it, if only to stop you from noticing their squabbles with the Sith,” she spat. “The fact that they handed over their own people without request for leniency is only proof that they are so cowed by you as to be obsolete.”

“Then _what_ are you _doing?_ ”

She stared at him, not quite able to believe he was so stupid as to need his hand held through the entirety of her plan. “The Alliance thwarts you at every turn, and instead of working to undo their petty rebellion, you lock yourself away in the war room and cry over the fact that nobody wants to play with you.”

He drew back as if she had struck him. “Why weren’t you asleep?” he hissed.

“What, sleep through the wailing and the rending of clothing and the immensity of your crisis of conscience?”

“ _Vaylin!_ ”

She wanted to tear her hair out in frustration. “You draw the Alliance out into the open, and you cripple their leadership,” she said, loudly and slowly, as if she were speaking to a child. It felt hot beneath her cloak, too clammy and uncomfortable, but she wasn’t going to take it off. Too many prying eyes to see her scars, too many ogling stares to look at her matted, filthy hair. _Poor princess, can’t even take care of herself, hah!_ “You know that Grandmaster Hervoz holds some kind of place of prestige amongst their ranks, to be trusted with Nox’s escape. Use his sister and his father as bait, and he and the others will come for them.”

She couldn’t see the sneer on his face, not entirely, but the way his eye narrowed was enough. “He is a fool if he allows himself to be so sentimental about family,” he said, and Vaylin did her best not to flinch.

“It’s always reassuring to know that you would rush to my aid without hesitation were the situations reversed, brother dear,” she said caustically.

The barb landed, and he retreated again, drawing into himself almost sullenly. “You expect me to believe that you would be foolish enough to be captured and bartered in the first place?” Arcann asked.

“I don’t know, brother- out of the two of us, I am the only one who has experienced lengthy captivity, after all.”

“I came for you, in the end,” he said quickly, but she had him on the backfoot now. “I was the one to free you from that place-”

“And I’m ever so grateful that it only took you the better part of a decade,” she said scornfully. She unfolded her legs, grimacing as the joints protested after having been stationary for so long, and she ignored the cracks and and crunches and slivers of pain as she climbed down off of the balustrade. Arcann backed up a step hastily, not enough to escape, but enough to let her know that he feared her. That he loathed everything she stood for, the reminder of yet more failings on his part and the guilt he felt at having escaped the worst of their father’s torture. “Now, if you wish to do the sensible thing and take advantage of this opportunity I have so graciously handed you, I suggest you call up your flagship.”

Arcann narrowed his eyes at her, but did not speak.

Vaylin lifted her chin, as if in defiance of him despite his silence. “As per my orders, the ship escorting the prisoners is immobilised in the Bakura Sector with a manufactured hyperdrive malfunction. If the Alliance do not take the bait soon, they will realise the ship has been stationary for too long and know it is a trap.”

“And if they do take the bait?” he asked.

“Well then, dear brother, what’s the point of baiting a trap if you aren’t there to spring it?”

* * *

_Alliance Private Tenements Sector, Odessen, Wild Space_

Tahrin paced slowly as she finished adjusting the straps on her wrist guards, tugging her sleeves down over her gloves to settle her costume in place. She had not had need for the Wrath armour in some time now- several months, thinking about it- and there was something terribly final about donning it now. It was as familiar as a second skin, in many ways, the comfort of an identity that did not ask her to be a good mother or a good spouse or a good leader- all it asked of her was the confidence to make that final, ruthless cut.

The girl raised to be Vitiate’s Dog did not ask questions. She did not think for herself. She killed exactly who she was ordered to.

She did not miss that girl- in fact she mourned her, more than anything, mourned the abuse that girl endured without anyone to speak for her, mourned the lives she took before she knew any better. But sometimes, in the quiet of her mind, she envied her for the naivety with which she moved through the world, unburdened by the truth of what she was and the hefty weight of leadership that was to come.

“Mother?”

She shook her head, dispelling her maudlin thoughts as she looked over to the bed, where Constance and Vaane sat side by side, watching her as she prepared herself for the coming storm. They were seven now, and they had reached a point where they were beginning to define themselves as individuals; Constance sat up straighter than Vaane, her gaze sharp and her dark curly hair left to form a soft cloud around her face. Vaane, by comparison, had a finger in his mouth as he chewed on a ragged fingernail, his face angled more towards the floor as he didn’t quite make eye contact.

It was, unsurprisingly, Constance who had spoken- even without her brother’s preference not to speak, she was bold and loud with other children and adults alike. _A right little madam_ , that was what Gabriel called her. “Yes, Constance?” she asked, smoothing her hands over her stomach as she tried to find the best place for the armour to sit.

“Are you going to die?”

Far too perceptive and far too bold. “What makes you ask that?”

Constance shrugged, and Vaane glanced at her, pulling gently on the hem of her shirt as if he wanted her attention but wasn’t quite sure how to ask. “Aunt Jaesa was very worried,” she said loftily. “And Poysee said she heard her and Aunt Vette talking.”

Tahrin crossed over to the bedside and carefully sank down onto one knee, to better speak to her daughter as an equal. The leather of her armour creaked ominously. “What were they talking about?” she asked quietly.

“Aunt Jaesa said that the Exarchs were scary and that Arcann was worse,” she said. “Are you going to fight Arcann?”

She thought about lying to them, and then immediately discarded the thought. If her children were old enough to ask about death, they were old enough to be spoken to with dignity, not coddled. “It’s very likely, yes.”

“Is he better at fighting than you?”

She couldn’t help the small smirk that tugged at the corner of her mouth. “No one is better at fighting than me, darling.”

Her eyes lit up, something like validation coming into her expression. “That’s what _I_ said,” she said excitedly, sitting up a little straighter. “Remember Vaane, I said that, remember?”

Vaane’s only answer was to start kicking his feet rhythmically against the bed.

“He says he remembers,” Constance said. “Is Arcann our uncle?”

That was a less comfortable topic, and her brief moment of comfort and amusement in the company of her children soured. “In a sense,” she said carefully.

“‘Cause he’s Uncle Thexan’s twin, ‘cept he tried to kill him,” she continued, with all the lofty confidence of a child who is utterly certain of the fact that she knows everything in existence. “ _I_ wouldn’t try to kill _Vaane_.”

Vaane glanced at her, a finger still in his mouth, and she looked at him and nodded ferociously, leaning over to kiss his cheek. He giggled and scrunched up his nose, which prompted Constance to giggle as well. It was one of those moments that cut at her so deeply- the devastating and desperate reminder that her children were so utterly innocent, that they were still _children_ , despite Connie’s attempts at sounding wiser than her years. When she had been their age, she had still been confined to the facility maintained by the Imperial Guard and the Emperor’s Hand. She had been so completely alone, alienated even from her sense of self, and without any notion of what a childhood was supposed to be.

Her children laughed. Her children had friends. Her children ran outside, and played make-believe, and jumped on their beds at night when their father attempted to read them a story.

There was nothing in the galaxy powerful enough to take that away from them- because whatever stood in the way of her children’s happiness, she was going to utterly destroy it.

She reached out and put a hand on each of their shoulders, leaning in close to them. “Sometimes,” she said quietly, “we need to make decisions that are painful. We need to do things that hurt, in order for things to become better. Not always, but sometimes.”

Constance reached down and took Vaane’s free hand. “I don’t want to kill Vaane but,” she said.

Tahrin brushed back an errant curl on her forehead, taking the moment to memorise exactly how her daughter looked in that moment, eyes solemn and bright, her whole life ahead of her. “And Thexan does not want to kill his brother,” she said, “so I will not ask him to. I will make the hard decision for him.”

Vaane sighed loudly, and she glanced at him. “Don’t die, Mother,” he said, mumbling the words around his fingers.

If this was a trap, then so be it. Maybe with this, she could end the war, end the invasion, and she could achieve what her own mother had been unable to do. Not just to finally put a stop to Vitiate’s world-devouring hunger for good, but also to live long enough to see her children grow to adulthood and become the beautiful, powerful individuals she knew they were capable of being. Vivaane had not managed that, not with the child she’d had with Bastila nor the children that Vitiate had forged from her DNA after her death.

She would not make the same mistakes as her mother.

She would not allow Vitiate to win.

And if she could not sway Arcann and Vaylin from the destructive course they had set themselves upon, well...

She would kill them.

* * *

_Alliance Headquarters, Odessen, Wild Space_

The sun had set maybe a half hour ago, and the sky above the base was a murky kind of purple, with the darker blues starting to creep in from the horizon. From where Navin stood in the command centre on the cliff top, the stars were only just beginning to sparkle against the darkness above him, and instead were mostly drowned out by the flood of lights illuminating the Gravestone, and the scaffolding that clung to the rock face. From up here, he could see the movement of Koth’s crew coming and going as they prepared the ancient ship for launch, and he liked to imagine if he squinted hard enough that he could make out Koth himself, directing the quiet madness with the same sort of confidence that had appealed to him so much since their very first meeting.

The thought of the Zakuulan captain drew a smile to his face despite the tension in his body, and he lifted a hand to the glass as if to reach out for him. How strange it was, that he could be caught up in something that had tested the limits of his faith and his courage so immensely, and yet at the same time find within that challenge a kernel of hope and joy unlike anything he had felt in years. He wasn’t a stranger to love and to lust- he was in his fifties, after all- but he had well and truly accepted that those heady days were behind him.

And yet in the midst of this darkness, in the midst of the greatest threat to have enveloped the galaxy since the days of the Great Hyperspace War, he had found something for himself. He wasn’t just fighting for the lives of his students, or the survival of the Jedi Order as a whole, or even for the democracy that he served. He had something for himself, something that belonged to nobody else, something that nobody else could intrude upon.

That something was about to board a ship in the dead of night, and journey out to very likely confront Emperor Arcann and his fleets. No matter how covertly they made their plans, no one seemed to be lying to themselves in the probability that this was anything other than a trap.

And here he stood, as useless as a jaboon in a jewellery store, forced to stay behind while Koth ventured into danger for his family.

“Grandmaster?”

He turned at the familiar voice, long having expected this confrontation, but still finding himself unprepared for it. At this hour of the night, most of the analysts worked down in the underground bunker- not that a cave was any warmer than a thinly shielded glass dome exposed to the elements- but there were still two or three techs plugging away silently in the background, doing their best not to look like they were eavesdropping. Behind him, having come up silently in the turbolift, was Major Jorgan, the current leader of Havoc Squad and his brother-in-law.

Damned Cathar, moving so quietly on their feet in full armour.

Navin turned to face him slowly, trying to determine whether or hug or a handshake was more appropriate, but realising a moment later that Jorgan had both hands tucked behind his back. Ah. That resolved that issue cleanly, then. “Major,” he said quietly, nodding in acknowledgement instead. “I wasn’t sure I was going to catch you before you departed.”

“I got your message,” Jorgan said, ears flicking slightly; otherwise, he did not move.

It took Navin a moment to realise that Jorgan had no intention of speaking with him, and was waiting for him to explain himself. He closed his eyes and tried not to stutter as he said “I know that you’ve got every reason to hate me-”

“I don’t hate you, Grandmaster,” he said, even if his tone conveyed an entirely different message.

“I’m sorry, alright?” he said, trying desperately to keep his voice low as he opened his eyes again. “I know I can say it until the stars burn out and it still won’t be enough to fix what has happened, but I’m _sorry_.”

There was a faint reflection from the floodlights below bouncing off of the back of Aric’s eyes, and it made them look like they were glowing in the dim light of the command centre. It was entirely unsettling, and Navin had to force himself not to look away. But to his surprise, it was Aric who looked away first, chuckling softly under his breath as he shook his head and looked down. “You don’t get it, do you?” he said.

Navin blinked. “I- what?”

“I’m not angry at you, Navin,” Aric said, voice low, “although I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little frustrated, knowing that she’s in danger and you’re walking around free.”

“That sounds like angry to me.”

“I’m _frustrated_ because there’s no easy way out of this situation,” he countered, a tinge of something sharper in his voice. “Because Ella and I spent the better part of a decade together fighting corruption and making a stand for justice, and she went and got herself arrested on corruption and collusion charges in the end.”

Navin swallowed. “I don’t really think-”

“And the worst part is? The worst part, Grandmaster? I don’t actually think she did the wrong thing. I’m damn proud that she took a stand for what she believed in and chose to fight for it, even knowing it could get her killed. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Every rebel thinks he’s fighting for the right reasons, every dissident thinks he’s got the moral stance that history will remember.”

Navin just stared.

“I actually think, all things considered, that this was an eventuality we were always going to find ourselves in,” Aric continued grimly. “Ella is just... too opinionated, to ever toe the line for long. I suppose I should just count ourselves lucky that she did it now, instead of five years ago when it was just the Imps to contend with. At least pissing off the Zaks got us some friends in high places who can help.”

Reaching out hesitantly, Navin put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m... sorry,” he managed weakly, unsure of what else to say. Whatever else he’d expected from Jorgan, it hadn’t been some kind of tangled confession about his struggles with morality.

Jorgan sighed, his ears flicking again. “Your sister wasn’t just my moral compass,” he said. “She was my best friend. She stopped me from doing a whole bunch of shit that would’ve seen me court martialled or worse, and dragged me along on escapades that should have seen both of us dishonourably discharged in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for her, and it...”

He made a noise, and Navin wasn’t even sure he was conscious of having made it, but it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end; it was completely inhuman, a guttural, animal noise, a reminder that Aric was- at the end of the day- not human. “The fact that we’re in this position at all means that the same wasn’t true for her,” he said, frustration bleeding through every word. “She didn’t need me the same way I needed her. And I don’t know if this rescue is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done before, but it’s right up there, and I-”

“ _Aric_ ,” Navin said, not sure where the conviction to speak came from, “you _know_ she would do the same for you without hesitation.”

Aric looked away.

“I know I don’t have the best relationship with her and it’s been a long time since the two of us were close- I mean, if we ever were to begin with-, but I do know that if you were the one being held by Zakuul, she wouldn’t even have waited for the Alliance to help her- she’d already be in there, beating on Skytroopers bare-handed if need be.”

Aric chuckled. “Damn right she would,” he said, and then sighed. “Sorry, Hervoz. I suppose I am a little pissy at you, but I can’t blame you- Ella was always going to end up in the shit like this.” He paused for a long moment, before continuing. “Now I just have to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with the rest of my life, since I’m fairly sure my career in the Republic is over.”

Navin had nothing witty to say in response to that, so instead he said “Do you regret it?” When Aric looked at him, he clarified. “Defecting, or- or abandoning your post, or whatever it is we’re doing out here. I mean... because I do, certainly. Green Jedi are supposed to be the guardians of democracy, etcetera, yet...” Damn it, he really needed to think more before blurting out the first thing that came to mind. “You know what, never mind.”

Aric huffed under his breath, something that was probably meant to be a laugh. “Ellaz showed me the value of questioning orders and holding my superiors accountable- but there’s a difference between that and absconding with a dozen of the Republic’s most highly trained soldiers and their equipment, in order to help a rogue state take down a tyrant. There’s morality choices and then there’s... whatever this is.”

They lapsed into silence, and in the night outside, the Gravestone’s engines began to glow; on the bridge, he knew that Koth and Bejah would be running the last preflight checks, preparing the ancient ship for launch in the next hour or so.

“Whatever this is,” Navin said quietly, “I hope it works.”

* * *

_Alliance Force Enclave, Odessen, Wild Space_

Senya moved slowly as she collected the discarded mats that the teenage classes had been using in their last session, outwardly relaxed as she hummed to herself while she worked. She had spent the last hour and a half teaching Zakuulan meditation techniques, the same sort of focus exercises that the Knights would use in their training sessions. The Alliance still embraced the diverse philosophies available for their students, and had not taken great pains to segregate the rescued children- especially if they had not been aligned to any particular order before their rescue. As such, she and several other defectors had offered their time and skills, to teach the younger generations the nuances of Zakuulan Force focusing.

It was... interesting, to say the least. For centuries, their powers had been a declaration of their faith, a gift and a measure of their devotion to Valkorion. Prior to his ascension, the old stories hinted at the forbidden gods providing such patronage, always a gift to the chosen, always a mark to set them apart. To go from that to the frankly impersonal relationship that Sith and Jedi had with their powers was startling, but in the wake of Valkorion’s exposure and defeat, what else was there to explain their situation? If their powers were not an act of divine providence, an indication that they were destined to serve in the greatest capacity, then... what did that leave them?

The Jedi altruism and aloofness, held apart from the galaxy even as they reshaped it?

The Sith arrogance and hunger, consuming everything in their path in their quest to empower themselves further?

Not to mention that training a new generation of younglings brought back painful, ugly memories of her failures with Vaylin, the reminder that she had failed the one person who had trusted her completely to encourage her and empower her and keep her safe. Not even the joy she found in Anya’s unparalleled enthusiasm could assuage the worst of her grief and her guilt, although being a part of Anya’s life and training certainly helped to take the worst of the sting out of it all.

She had failed her daughter, but she would not fail her granddaughter.

She closed the equipment locker, lost in her own maudlin thoughts, and nearly jumped in alarm when she turned to find a woman standing close behind her. She took a steadying breath, pressing a hand to her chest. “Seeker Oramis,” she said hesitantly, nodding to the young woman before her.

Oramis was one of perhaps half a dozen surviving Scions from Asylum, and had become their de facto leader since Heskal’s death; there were other survivors who had come to the Alliance in dribs and drabs over the years, and they were a pale reflection of their former might. Perhaps due to her unusual position amongst the Knights and amongst the Zakuulan court, she had never worked in a Knight-Scion pairing, and as such she still occasionally found herself unsettled by their abilities. The Scions- far more than the Knights- were intrinsically tied to Valkorion’s legacy, the Order having been crafted by him hundreds of years ago to better guide the destiny of the Zakuulan Empire.

Perhaps it was the reminder that they saw far more than they shared that unnerved her, or perhaps it was the uneasy likelihood that they had seen everything that had come to befall her family and had done nothing to prevent it.

Or worse, worked to see it come to fruition.

“Your Imperial Majesty,” Oramis said, her voice soft and breathy as she bowed her head in reverence; Senya did her best not to sigh at the formal address.

“You know you don’t have to call me that.”

“It is simply an expression of the deep respect I and my Order have for you, your Majesty,” she said, raising her head again to look her squarely in the eye.

Unsure of what exactly to say to that that could possibly dissuade her, Senya cleared her throat instead. “I don’t see many of your people using the enclave down here,” she said, gesturing to the near empty hall; there were a few night-birds using the sparring mats on the far side of the chamber, but otherwise they were alone. “You know it would be vastly beneficial for you all to contribute to some of the-”

“We contribute in our own way, when the time is right,” Oramis said.

Senya snapped her mouth shut in annoyance, trying not to let her frustration at having been interrupted show. “Very well, then.”

Oramis very abruptly stepped closer, almost to the point of being uncomfortably within Senya’s personal space. “Your Majesty, I come with a grave warning for you, an omen which you must act upon with all haste if you are to save the life of your child.”

A sliver of ice slid down her spine, and Senya hesitated. “To whom are you referring?” she asked carefully, doing her best not to show too much interest; she remembered Heskal’s fanatical devotion to Valkorion, at the expense of the lives of his brethren. She had loved Valkorion too deeply as well, and her blind faith had cost her daughter everything. She desperately wanted to avoid any further mistakes, but she did not want to place her trust in the people who her late husband had shaped to be his own personal weapon.

Ironic, really, given that she was in an Alliance run by his former assassin.

“You must join the rescue mission for Colonel Hervoz and her father,” Oramis continued, ignoring her question. “Your involvement in this mission will change the fate of the galaxy, for better or for worse.”

The sliver of ice began to grow, until it resembled more of a torrent of icy rapids beneath her skin. “Yes, but _why?_ ” she asked impatiently.

Oramis’ pale eyes glowed in her dark face, her expression utterly unreadable. “Zakuul can be saved or destroyed, to be forgotten by history, based on what happens tonight and the choices you make, your Majesty.”

“Yes, but _what choice?_ Are my children in danger?”

“When you have made your choice,” Oramis said, her voice so low that Senya still had to lean in closer to hear her, “remember Voss.”

Senya stared at her. “Remember Voss? What does that mean? The planet, or the people?”

Oramis simply nodded. “Be well, your Majesty,” she said, before turning on her heel and gliding away.

She watched her go, frustration and indecision and worry dragging her mood down into the gutter; she wished that she had more information to go off of, but she knew by now not to hope for better when it came to the Scions and the nebulous nature of their proclamations.

_If you are to save the life of your child._

Which child? Was it Vaylin, or Arcann? Or even worse, would something happen to Thexan if she did not join the Gravestone team? What if, through her inaction, she allowed something to befall the one child who _had_ escaped the toxic snare Valkorion had set upon him, and the pride and the joy and the relief she felt looking at Thexan would be for naught because her indecision allowed something sinister to happen to him?

What if she had a chance to save Vaylin, after having failed her so badly in the past? What if this was the moment where she could begin to undo the immensity of the pain she had inflicted on her beautiful daughter, and could help Vaylin to become the woman she could have been had it not been for the lifetime of abuse and torture that she had endured?

_You must act with all haste._

She was still wearing her casual gear from the training sessions, rather than her armour. She hadn’t had more than a light supper, partially because she’d never been fond of exercising on a full stomach, and partially because she’d been supposed to see Master Xolani afterwards for a late dinner. The other woman had, in the past few weeks, become a genuinely surprising comfort for her, a friend and a confidante who understood the weariness of grieving in a public position, and who also had come through the loss of love determined to flourish on the other end.

Xolani was a friend. A good friend- she hesitated to clarify their relationship any further than that out of fear she was reading too much into things. And above all else, she did not want to hurt a good friend’s feelings.

... it was just dinner, though. And this was the potential to save one of her children- Scyva take her, what if she could save both of them? What if she could just talk to them, have a chance to explain and urge them to set aside their violent ways? Surely Xolani would understand?

She set off at a run.

She had her lightsaber at her hip, which was better than nothing, and at least she was wearing shoes- for some of the more acrobatic classes, it wasn’t unusual for both students and teachers to go about barefoot on the training mats. And she didn’t need armour, not to save her children, she wasn’t going to bludgeon them into submission after all.

The elevator to the surface was too slow to rise, so she braced herself and lunged upwards, catching a foothold on the wall halfway up the shaft. She pushed off again, and then again, jumping back and forth from wall to wall as she made her way up to the public platform that the Gravestone was anchored to. The turbolift was still thirty feet below her as she skidded onto the surface, and across the way she could see the Lord Wrath making her way down the gangway towards the Gravestone’s cargo bay, the engines humming in preparation for launch.

“Lord Dara!”

Tahrin turned to face her, her helmet tucked under one arm and her dark hair slicked back from her pale, scarred face. As always, she was struck by the eeriness of her resemblance to Valkorion and the Scions, not so much in her appearance but certainly in her mannerisms and her body language; cold, stormy silver eyes watched her dispassionately, and she squared her shoulders as she approached her. “I’m afraid I cannot stop to talk,” Tahrin started to say, but Senya cut her off.

“I need to come with you,” she said, her tone brooking no room for argument.

Apparently that was not the response Tahrin had been expecting, because she frowned ever so slightly, her gaze darting over her attire. “This is a combat mission,” she said, her voice just as even as it had been for the first statement, crisp and unemotional. “I do not think you are properly outfitted to join us.”

“You are going aboard a Zakuulan battlecruiser, and you would benefit from someone who is not only a native speaker of the language, and can address any issues raised by communication disparities, but who has also spent extensive amounts of time travelling aboard such vessels, and is familiar with the layout.” It was a rather spur of the moment excuse, and she was satisfied at least that it was not terrible.

Tahrin was silent for a moment, and Senya cursed silently at how impossible to read the woman was. Finally, Tahrin inclined her head to the side, as if considering. “You are not suitably outfitted for a combat situation,” she said again. “We are very likely going to encounter resistance on the vessel, and I cannot in good conscience allow you to risk yourself while so sparsely dressed.”

She thought fast. “There are still a number of standard Knight armour sets onboard from Nox’s rescue,” she said. “I’m sure from amongst those, I can find one to fit adequately.”

The Wrath was once again silent, and the light from the cargo bay made it hard to make out her expression, casting deep shadows over the curves and angles of her face. The thought that she might actually refuse her, that she might be thwarted this soon into her attempt, sent a shiver through her, and she raised her chin, planting a hand defiantly on the lightsaber at her hip. “You need me,” she said, with all the confidence she could muster.

The moment stretched out.

Tahrin nodded, and gestured towards the Gravestone. “By all means,” she said.

* * *

_Alliance Headquarters, Odessen, Wild Space_

Settling in with a cup of peppermint tea, Xolani tucked her feet up beneath her on the couch, tucking a blanket over her lap as she powered up her encrypted datapad; this one worked independently of the Odessen network, connecting directly to the Lady of Sorrows servers in the Old World on Zakuul. She hummed quietly to herself as she waited for the encryption module to confirm the lock, taking a careful sip of tea and blowing on the surface when the first tentative mouthful proved to be too hot.

She was disappointed that her plans for the evening with Senya had fallen through, and she was trying not to dwell on that disappointment. Certainly she had no sort of claim to the other woman’s time, and was blessed just to count her amongst her friends at all; they had a certain rapport that made her feel invigorated and refreshed, an emotional connection that made her feel... _things_. Like she was naught but a girl again, blushing over over padawans in the temple, or doing her best not to stare in the barracks when she was assigned to the field and inevitably had to deal with the sort of casual, confident nudity that soldiers adopted.

She wasn’t a young woman- she was very well aware of that- but she felt younger when she was around Senya. Younger, sillier, giddier.

... perhaps it was better that Senya had been recruited for the rescue mission at the last minute. Perhaps this time apart would help her to centre herself, and remind herself of her responsibilities and her age. She couldn’t waste her time giggling over a silly, schoolgirl crush when the galaxy was very literally at war and she was trying to help topple an undying, ancient tyrant.

A whistling beep came from over her shoulder, and she glanced backwards to smile at Parrot. “It is rather quiet tonight,” she agreed, and the droid whistled enthusiastically in response. “Well, what about some music? Didn’t we just get that recording of the Zeltron Philharmonic a few weeks ago, I don’t think we’ve listened to that.”

Parrot chirped a request for clarification.

“I think the Venkatta performance tonight, Parrot. The soprano was just divine.”

A soft orchestral overture began to filter through her room’s speakers, and she sighed comfortably, looking back down to her datapad. It was still attempting to connect, and she frowned. Turning it over to reach the encryption module, she flicked the power switch a few times and sighed, putting it back down on her lap to wait for the system to reboot and attempt to connect again.

She hummed along with the melody as she waited, sipping her tea now that the temperature had eased slightly. To keep herself occupied, she pulled open the top drawer of the table beside her and fished around inside for a bottle of moisturising oil, singing softly under her breath as she began gathering up small sections of her hair and carefully rubbing the oil over the ends, checking for splits as she went. She was so involved in her task that she made it all the way through her hair, finishing up by tying off a comfortable old silk scarf around her head and tucking her curls up inside.

A good ten or fifteen minutes had passed, and the first act was well and truly underway; Xolani picked up her datapad, absently wiping her hands clean of the oil on the blanket on her lap.

... and paused.

“Parrot,” she called over her shoulder, “are you connected to the Lady of Sorrows network at the moment?”

A slow burbling beep came from behind her, and she grimaced. “I know you’re recharging,” she said patiently. “Please, can you see what the problem is? I’m having trouble.”

The droid equivalent of a sigh sounded, and there was a gentle whir as Parrot pushed off from their corner and made their way over to the computer terminal. She pushed up on one elbow so that she could crane around and watch as the spike jutted out from the droid’s chassis and plugged into the wall socket. Parrot’s dented chrome dome rotated once or twice, and then a series of distressed beeps began to emanate from them.

Xolani sat up straighter. “What do you mean you’re locked out?”

Parrot trilled shrilly.

“Scorpio? But her last report didn’t indicate anything was amiss, why would...”

She paused, as her thoughts crystallized, and a dawning horror began to creep over her. “What were the names of Lord Dara’s agents on Zakuul?”

Parrot answered after a moment’s hesitation to retrieve the answer, and Xolani typed their names into her database with shaking fingers.

_Kaliyo Djannis. Aranth’ake’cspala._

And there, under known associates- Scorpio.

* * *

_Palace of the Eternal Dragon, Zakuul, Wild Space_

“Shit. Fuck.”

Kaliyo rolled her head slowly to the side and looked at him, pale eyes amused. “Trouble?” she drawled.

Thake scrubbed ferociously at the shoulder of his jacket, his hand tucked into his sleeve to make it into a makeshift wipe. “Fucking bird shat on me,” he said, trying to smear away the long white streaks on the dark jacket. “Fucking bird. Fucking Zakuul. Fucking tree city bullshit-”

Kaliyo’s laugh cut him off. “I’m pretty sure other planets have birds, babe,” she said. “And I’m pretty sure they shit there, too.”

“On Csilla we never had to deal with fucking wildlife, because we knew how to run a civilised society without the barbaric wilderness encroaching on us every two minutes.”

She clucked her tongue. “And here I thought you hated your home.”

He scoffed. “I didn’t say I _liked_ it- I just said we knew how to run a proper society, unlike the rest of the fucking galaxy.”

“Your organic nattering is tiresome.” Walking in front of them, Scorpio did not even glance over her shoulder to insult them. “You will draw unnecessary attention to us preemptively.”

“What, because a Chiss, a Rattataki and a Robo-Titties walking around in downtown Zakuul is the most subtle squad to begin with,” Kaliyo said dryly.

“We sound like the beginning of a joke,” Thake grumbled.

“We _are_ a joke, babe,” Kaliyo corrected.

“Silence,” Scorpio said, gliding forward towards the grand entrance to the palace. Ahead of them, a pair of Knights were on duty, their saber-pikes held at rest as they watched them approach.

“Ho there,” one of them called, starting to raise a hand to stop them. “The palace is currently off limits to the public. The next public gala will be in-”

Thake pulled the blaster pistol from his coat and shot him.

The bolt landed square in the centre of his helmet, and the blaster had been modified to discharge a small pellet charged with enough electrical output to take out a charging rancor. The Knight never even had a chance to yell out in alarm as the front of his helmet imploded, glass and metal and heat and bone and brain immediately smeared on the wall behind him as he fell twitching to the ground, his body quite audibly buzzing as the electronic pellet shorted out the systems within his armour.

The second Knight reacted instantly, swinging his pike around into an aggressive stance, but he clearly hadn’t been expecting this level of hostility, and the movement was just too slow to counter the small dart that burst from Scorpio’s palm; it impacted with his chest plate and sent him flying backwards in a cacophony of fire and smoke, smashing in the front doors to the palace atrium.

“Sorry bud, our family holiday pass expires today, so we can’t wait for the next public gala,” Kaliyo said, stooping to pick up the first Knight’s polesaber as Thake and Scorpio headed inside. “Ooh, souvenirs!”

An alarm started blaring as the smoke cleared, and Kaliyo pointedly stood on the unconscious Knight’s body before yelling “Fore!” and making a clumsy attempt at a golf swing with the pike. There was a searing crunch sound, and the Knight’s head went clattering backwards as the saber separated it from his body.

Thake, having freed himself of the soiled jacket to better reach the arsenal of weapons that had been hiding beneath it, scowled at her. “Must you?”

“Hey, I haven’t overthrown a government in years, I had the jitters. Girl’s gotta get her fix where she can.” The alarms grew more shrill, and she made an obscene gesture up towards the ceiling before pulling on her tactical headset; it immediately dulled the sound, and gave her a schematic readout of the surrounding hallways. “We’ve got incoming.”

“They are irrelevant,” Scorpio said, unhindered by the noise, and as the doors burst open from a half dozen directions and Skytroopers began pouring into the atrium, she raised her arms as if she meant to call them to her to embrace them. Her eyes flashed, and a moment of static flickered over Kaliyo and Thake’s visors, and the Skytroopers as one all skidded to a halt.

There were shouts of alarm in the distance, and the heat sensors in the visors showed a number of humans moving towards them- presumably more Knights, and guards of the more mundane variety.

“My children,” Scorpio crooned, eyes still ablaze, “defend your mother.”

The Skytroopers turned, drew their weapons, and began to massacre the palace defenders.

Blaster fire and screams echoed through the corridors as they made their way deeper into the palace, Scorpio unwavering in her path as she guided them; Kaliyo and Thake dealt with the few stragglers that managed to cut through the hordes of droids to reach them, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake.

Kaliyo shot down the massive crystalline chandelier in the ballroom as they passed through, laughing delightedly as it smashed into a million pieces or more.

Thake smashed every piece of pottery and every statue they passed, until the front of his clothes were covered in a fine layer of clay dust and blood.

They left a path of wreck and ruin behind them, defacing everything they could reach as they kept pace with Scorpio. When she finally led them into the foyer housing the lifts that travelled to the heights of The Spire, the pair only reluctantly joined her in the small cubicle as it began to soar upwards. It was the most vulnerable part of their mission, when they could not see the counter efforts that the palace defence were rousing, and they could not tell if they had wagered it best to fire upon the tower and destroy them while they were kilometres above the planet’s surface.

It was awkwardly silent in the turbolift, none of them looking at one another, none of them interested in conversation. Thake had a burn across his cheek that he was poking at relentlessly, and Scorpio was standing directly in front of the doors, the better to immediately overtake the throne room once they arrived.

Kaliyo very loudly popped a giant bubble of gum.

“Where the fuck did you get gum?” Thake snapped.

She blew another at him. “What, a girl can’t have gum?”

“Were you going to share?”

“Fuck no.”

“But what if I wanted gum?”

“You are both insufferable,” Scorpio said, and the doors slid open. Whatever command she had issued in the palace far below had apparently transferred easily enough to the droids on duty up here, because the path towards the throne was strewn with the bodies of the Knights. There was still one alive, groaning pathetically, and as he tried to crawl onto his knees to stop them, Scorpio extended a blade from her arm, impaling him violently through the back fo the head. She didn’t even break her stride, stepping over his collapsed body as she continued towards the throne.

Thake rubbed irritably at the side of his jaw, working it up and down as his ear ache increased. “The pressure up here isn’t great,” he said, shaking his head as if to dispel the sensation of being off balance.

Next to him, Kaliyo was doing the same, and she spat her gum onto the floor as she pulled her visor off of her head. “What the hell?” she said, wincing and putting both hands up to her head.

Scorpio reached the throne, and Thake fell to his knees, his face contorted in agony. “You chrome plated bitch!” he hissed. “What have you done?”

Through his blurred vision, he saw Scorpio brush a hand over the throne, and the stars beyond the dome began to move. “I have awoken my children,” she said softly.

“That wasn’t the plan!” Kaliyo yelled, but she too was on the floor.

“It was not your plan, no,” Scorpio said, “but my plan was far greater than any your simple mortal minds could comprehend.”

Beyond the glass dome of the throne room, the Eternal Fleet jumped to hyperspace.

* * *

_New Kalikori, Odessen, Wild Space_

There was an urgent rapping at the door, and Kol’s body was far too well trained from years of working in emergency care- she was on her feet before she was even really properly awake.

“Kol? Kol, you in there?”

She nearly tipped over, and threw one hand out in the dark to fumble for the wall for balance. Blinking rapidly, she took a sharp breath, rubbing the heel of her palm against her eyes.

“Kol?”

“Coming,” she called, her voice husky from sleep.

She slapped the wall a few times until she found the light pad, wincing when the warm burst of light bounced around in her skull excitedly; she tried not to sigh in frustration when she caught a glimpse of the chrono. She stumbled over towards the front of the clinic, tugging her robe off the back of a chair as she passed; she didn’t bother to cover a yawn as she pulled it on over her shoulders and wrapped it soundly around her near nudity. The floor was cold beneath her bare feet, and she thought longingly of the warm Rishi nights as she made her way to the door.

To be on the safe side, she checked the holo before she opened it, and was resigned to see Ysaine standing outside. The damned woman looked as bright and cheery as if it was mid morning, not... well, technically it probably was mid morning. Close to mid morning. Gritting her teeth, she disengaged the lock and the door hissed open.

Ysaine was leaning up against he doorframe, a charming smile on her face. “Who wants some good news?” she said in a singsong voice.

Kol just stared at her flatly.

Ysaine faltered slightly. “What?”

“It’s the middle of the fucking night, Izzy.”

“Not on Rishi, it’s not.”

“We’re not _on_ Rishi, asshole.”

“Mm, about that- you ready to go home?”

Kol blinked. “I... what?”

Apparently Ysaine found her stupefied expression utterly delightful, because she cackled, slapping her thigh in amusement. “I should’ve taken a holo,” she said, beaming at her. “Your face was priceless just now.”

Kol grabbed her by the arm. “What do you- what do you mean?” she asked, her voice shaking. She was trying not to focus on the way Ysaine casually referred to Rishi as home for both of them, as if it something they shared together. “I can’t leave Odessen-”

“Tahrin gave the go ahead a few hours ago,” Ysaine said, and her smile eased slightly, a tiny frown creasing her forehead. “You did get the message, yeah?”

She felt like the world was abruptly upended on top of her, and she put a hand on the wall to steady herself. “I... no, I haven’t had any messages, but- why? Have I been taken off the Most Wanted list?”

Izzy stepped inside the door, and it slid closed behind her. “How about we do this indoors, and not wake up half the village too, huh?” she said, guiding her over to the closest chair. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you like this. I figured you’d heard and were just getting some shut eye before the flight.”

Kol rubbed at her face, trying to grasp onto the spiralling, confusing threads that were winding around her. After literal months of trying to break free of the Alliance’s smothering concern, she was really just... free to leave? Just like that? Without any fanfare or apologies or anything? “I must still be asleep,” she muttered.

There was a sharp little thud against the curve of her lekku, and she scowled as Ysaine stepped back from having flicked her. “Nah, you’re awake,” she said, winking cheekily.

Casting her a withering glance, she instead climbed to her feet and walked over to her desk, fishing around in the top drawer for her datapad. She clicked on the screen and scanned through the contents. “I haven’t had a message tonight,” she said, scrolling further back through the timeline.

“Huh. Weird.”

Kol glanced back at her. “And you’re sure she said I was allowed to leave,” she said dubiously.

Izzy folded her arms and rested her hip against the bench behind her. “Hand to heart,” she said. “I dunno why your message didn’t get through, but she spoke to Shae earlier on and said that the clans were free to take off if they didn’t want to hang around, and gave the all clear for everyone else.”

That just didn’t... that just didn’t make _sense_. None of it did, and it wasn’t just because it was the middle of the night and she was struggling to get her thoughts in order. “And Shae wasn’t worried about the clans drawing repercussions from Zakuul if they were seen being more active out in the world?”

“I dunno babe, I wasn’t at the meeting. Just got it all second hand.”

“Did she or Tahrin say why it was safe for them to leave? Or for me?”

“Something about Tahrin drawing all the flak, with that mission she’s gone on tonight.”

Kol frowned. “What?”

“She hasn’t been off Odessen for a few months now,” Ysaine explained. “So her being part of the rescue crew is like, supposed to taunt Zakuul and get their attention or something.”

“... I thought it was supposed to be a covert mission, I didn’t think they were trying to draw attention to themselves at all- isn’t that why they didn’t take a full crew?”

“Hey, I don’t understand how Tahrin runs things around here, she was off killing Exarchs and shit by herself. Probably could’ve done this rescue solo if she really wanted to.”

Kol walked forward slowly, not quite pacing but definitely moving as she tried to deal with the restless energy within her. “No, that doesn’t make sense, none of this makes sense-”

“Look, you don’t have to come back to Rishi with us right now, if you’d rather go back to sleep or something- you can catch a ride back in the next couple of days-”

“But why! Why is it suddenly safe?”

“It’s really not that deep, Kol.”

“But what did she say? Why, after months of treating me like I’m some kind of double agent, does she suddenly not care if I leave or not?”

Ysaine threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know! She just said it wouldn’t be an issue anymore!”

“What, so she’s going to take up every spot on the Most Wanted list, is that it? Suddenly Zakuul has no other enemies except for the Wrath?”

Hands still in the air as if in defeat, Ysaine made to move towards the door. “Okay, I didn’t think you’d get this worked up about it, so I’ll just leave you to get back to sleep, yeah? Get some shut eye, and if you still wanna head back to Rishi, one of the gang’ll give you a lift if you ask, ‘kay?”

Kol put her hands on her head, and watched her go.

“Not even goodnight, huh?” Ysaine paused at the door. “And after I came all this way?”

Kol’aya knew that the Force was a real and tangible thing, but she certainly didn’t like it. She didn’t like that it gave certain people a better start in life, that it made certain people think of themselves as god-like. She certainly didn’t like the way it was used as an excuse and an alibi and a justification for goddess near everything under the sun.

She absolutely, one hundred percent did not believe that it gave people visions or dreams, that it could provide some sort of mysterious glimpse into the future.

But the answers to her questions suddenly clarified before her, the dozen or so frustratingly loose ends all weaving together rapidly to construct a tapestry that was so painfully clear that it staggered her. She wanted to say that she was finally awake enough for her mind to follow the obvious trail of clues, but even then, it still seemed like a leap of logic that she was suddenly utterly confident in making.

She stared at Ysaine, and the hard expression on Ysaine’s face slowly softened into one of quizzical concern. “Kol?” she said carefully. “What is it?”

She really didn’t even know how she knew.

“Tahrin’s going to kill Arcann,” she whispered.

* * *

_Bakura Sector, Zakuulan Imperial Territories, Wild Space_

Tahrin stood on the bridge of the captured battlecruiser, her stance wide and her hands clasped behind her back. Behind her, the Gemini droid controlling the vessel was in pieces, strewn across the deck with the searing burn marks of Tahrin’s lightsaber leaving black streaks over the polished metal.

She was alone, having volunteered to infiltrate the bridge by herself while Major Jorgan and Senya led the rescue team deeper into the ship.

Before her, the stars were spread out like cold flecks of ice. Everything was silent.

And then-

There was a distant flicker of light, and in the space between one breath and the next it resolved itself into a blinding streak, and then she was no longer alone with the stars.

Emperor Arcann’s flagship cruised to a stop, holding position in the near distance.

Beneath the visor of her helmet, Tahrin smiled.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for canon typical violence (including limb loss), references to past child abuse and past acts of self-harm.

_Bakura Sector, Zakuulan Imperial Territories, Wild Space_

Arcann stared across the bow of his flagship, hands clasped silently as he considered the scene before him. Several hundred thousand kilometres away, hanging against the dusty blackness of the galactic backdrop, were two ships- one, a standard Zakuulan battlecruiser, the type that normally travelled in a battle group of five ships at absolute minimum, and the other, an archaic and cumbersome vessel that looked positively hideous in comparison. He could give the order and have both of them blasted out of the sky, left as nothing more than drifting wreckage to serve as a warning for the rest of his enemies, and he could not deny that the appeal was immense.

One word, one order, and he could cripple the Alliance. He could consolidate his hold on the galaxy.

He could _win_.

Vaylin stepped up beside him, flexing her hands at her sides as if she wanted to clench them into fists but needed to fidget. “Do you feel it?” she hissed, her whisper cracking through the silence of the bridge like a whip; the crew at their stations were all studiously pretending not to listen, as they always were. If there was one thing he demanded without question amongst his staff, it was their utmost discretion.

He didn’t bother to look at her, instead staring across the gulf towards the two stationary vessels. “Feel what?”

“ _Mother_.”

A flicker of something passed through his blood- panic, maybe? Guilt?- but he quickly dismissed it. “She made her choice,” he growled softly.

There was a charge in the air, something electric- a sense of finality, of _destiny_ , as little as he believed in a predetermined destiny. He made his own destiny, he shaped it painfully with his own bloodied, broken hands, and this moment was entirely his. He was going to crush the Alliance, make of them an example that would leave the entire galaxy quaking at the force of his wrath.

The First Officer spoke in hushed tones to one of the bridge technicians, glancing uncomfortably in their direction before he gestured for her to approach. “Your Majesty,” she said, bowing her head, “we have an incoming transmission from the battlecruiser.”

He nodded. “Put it through.”

“They are, ah... they are not using standard encryption procedures-”

“I _said_ , put it _through_.”

She bowed her head again, even lower this time. “As you say, your Majesty.” She turned and gestured to the communications techs, and they scrambled to establish the link with the other ship. Arcann remained frozen, hands clasped behind his back and shoulders rigid, his stance wide; beside him, Vaylin stood a step behind, fidgeting at the edge of his peripheral vision. There was a ragged hem on the sleeve of her hooded cloak, and she was tugging on the frayed threads, pulling them free and letting them fall to the deck of the bridge.

“Stop that,” he snarled under his breath.

“Make me,” she snapped back.

There was a flash of light as the holoprojector activated, and then there on the bridge, a half dozen paces ahead of them, stood a figure. They were unsettling to look upon, their armour ragged and worn as if it was as ancient as the ship on which they travelled; their helmet, likewise, was tarnished and ancient, the angles that of a style and generation that had passed by millenia ago. It was like looking at a ghost.

The ghost inclined their head as if in greeting. “Emperor Arcann,” it said, the voice a scratchy, robotic monotone. “High Justice.”

Beneath his own mask, he gritted his teeth. “ _Wrath_ ,” he spat.

“I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me like this-”

“ _You_ walked into _our_ trap!” Vaylin snarled, stabbing a finger towards the holo figure.

“And a very poor trap it is- unless it was your intention all along to simply corner me for the sake of conversation?”

Arcann growled quietly at Vaylin, and despite the filthy look she gave him, she sullenly stepped back again without complaint. He looked back to the holo figure, frustrated that the Wrath could so easily gain the upper hand, and so quickly. “You have commandeered one of my vessels, killed my staff,” he said. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just blast you from the sky.”

The figure didn’t even move. “Your Majesty, we both know that had you intended to kill me, you would have done so by now,” they said. “Furthermore, you would not have come in person had you intended to kill me- you would have sent the fleet and dismissed the matter as resolved.”

“Perhaps I prefer the satisfaction of knowing that an enemy has been dealt with in a manner that pleases me,” he countered.

“Ah, so you do not trust your subordinates-”

“And yet neither do you- given that you yourself have taken part in what is otherwise a paltry rescue mission.” He felt a ruthless surge of triumph as the Wrath paused, and continued. “So why not dispel with these nonsensical games, and tell me what it is that you want.”

“Just fire on them,” Vaylin whispered at his side. “Get it over and done with!”

He breathed out slowly through his nose, trying to contain his irritation. “If we fire upon _them_ , then the Gravestone will fire upon _us_ ,” he said pointedly, not taking his gaze away from the Wrath for a moment; the faceless mask was unsettling, which he assumed was the point, but for some reason having seen grainy images of the woman beneath the mask did not make it any more tolerable. The Wrath did not seem like a living, breathing individual any more than one of his Skytroopers did. A simulacrum of sentience, an unstoppable machine in every other way.

“I would like to propose a truce, of sorts,” the Wrath said, disrupting his grim musings. “Clearly you were expecting me, just as I was expecting you. You cannot fire upon me, and I cannot fire upon you.”

Arcann scowled. “And what? We sit here and exchange barbs until my Fleet arrives and overwhelms your paltry defences?”

They finally brought their hands around to the front, gesturing widely. “My ‘ _paltry defences_ ’ have twice now wrought terrible destruction upon your Fleet,” they said, and despite it being spoken in the same robotic monotone, he could _feel_ the smugness seeping through the holocall. “You place your confidence in a shield that simply does not exist.”

“ _Enough!_ ” The word thundered through the bridge like an oncoming storm, sharp and deep and distant at once. The Wrath did not even twitch, and Vaylin at his side ducked her head, clenching her hands over and over. “I will not be condescended to by my father’s lapdog!”

“Let us have this over and done with, then,” they said. “Here is my proposal- you will allow my people to take Colonel and Councillor Hervoz to safety, by way of a single shuttle that will travel from this cruiser to the Gravestone.”

“That is unacceptable,” Arcann spat, but she was not done.

“In return, I will take a shuttle and travel over to your vessel, so that we might speak in person. Additionally, you will have me as your prisoner and bargaining chip, and the assurance that the Gravestone will not fire upon your ship while I remain aboard. Are these terms acceptable?”

Arcann gestured to the comms terminal. “Mute,” he said, making a cutting motion. The holo image did not freeze in place, but there was no sound coming from the call any more- and presumably the Wrath could no longer hear them either. Arcann grabbed Vaylin by the arm and turned her around, so that their backs were to their opponent. “You said that this would be a chance to cripple the Alliance,” he hissed, keeping his voice low so as not to be overheard by the rest of the crew. “So far all we have achieved so far is further humiliation-”

“You have the Alliance Commander within your grasp, the woman who has taunted you for years now, and all you can think of is the fact that she made _fun_ of you?” Vaylin asked incredulously. “Have you no spine? Shall I ask to speak to her mother, and have her scold her for being too mean to you?”

“This was your idea!”

“Is that a yes?”

He snarled at her and shoved her, anxiety and rage pressing up against his skin as he turned back to the call; he irritably waved a hand towards the comms technicians, and the sound resumed. “You will surrender yourself to my flagship as a first point of order,” he snarled, pacing back and forth before the image of the Wrath. “If you attempt to remove my prisoners from that vessel before your shuttle has docked with my ship, I will give the order to fire upon all vessels with extreme prejudice. Is that understood?”

The Wrath inclined their head in acknowledgement. “I will depart shortly.”

They disconnected on their end, and Arcann breathed out shakily, his hands trembling from adrenalin and anger and fear. This was it. He was going to put an end to the Alliance. That fool had delivered herself directly to his doorstep with her ego, and he was going to destroy her, and then after that her damnably fucking Alliance would fall, and-

Something short circuited nearby, a shriek sounding at the same time that a shower of sparks lit up the bridge. The automated fire prevention systems kicked in, and the fault was quickly isolated and kept from spreading.

He was breathing heavily through his mask, and he felt like he couldn’t draw enough air into his lungs.

Vaylin stepped up beside him again. “Mother is on that ship,” she said, and her singular fixation on a woman who didn’t matter frustrated him all the more.

“She will die with the rest of them,” he growled.

There was nothing to do but wait.

* * *

Tahrin was already moving, marching sharply from the bridge with a hand raised to her ear, activating the commlink in her helmet. “Jorgan, do you have the objective?” she asked.

“Affirmative,” came the immediate response, and in the background she could hear muffled obscenities in a familiar female voice, which indicated that the colonel was conscious at the very least.

“Do you and your team require assistance to make the rendezvous point?”

“- _walked right into a motherfucking trap like a goddamn idiot_ -”

“Negative, Commander,” Jorgan said. “Although we will need a medic on standby for Councillor Hervoz.”

The hallway leading from the bridge was strewn with the wreckage of the droids who had died trying to keep her from their captain; they had died just as easily as the Gemini had. She stepped over them with ease, not breaking her stride as she made her way back towards the hangar bay. “Captain Vortena?”

“Copy that,” Koth said in her ear. “We’ve only got a medic droid, but we’ll have it prepped.”

“It’ll have to do,” Tahrin said briskly, taking a steep set of stairs through the back of a maintenance corridor. There were still sparking panels and blackened marks over the walls, smashed Skytroopers and broken surveillance droids littering the path. “What is our status?”

“Long range scans ain’t showing anything so far,” he said. The pause that came after was almost comical, the frustration and the agitation bleeding through. It was painfully predictable when he succumbed and blurted out “Commander, there’s no reason why the Gravestone can’t-”

“Hold your fire, Captain,” she said calmly. “That’s an order.”

In the hangar bay, their shuttle sat ready for launch, the loading ramp lowered while a handful of Alliance personnel milled around before it. As Tahrin approached, she took in the scene- Major Jorgan standing tall as he quietly issued orders to the squad around him, one hand placed on the shoulder of the woman who sat on a crate beside him. Her brown skin had a decidedly green undertone to it, and her face bore signs of recent unpleasantness, with her left eye swollen almost entirely shut and dried blood that could have come from either the crooked nose or the split lip. She looked exhausted, and haggard, but she looked leagues better than the man on the hoverbed beside her who was currently unconscious and being loaded carefully onto the shuttle.

Senya, wearing the golden armour of a Knight as she’d suggested, was standing guard, her expression pinched and miserable; Tahrin hadn’t made it a point to broadcast her conversation with the rest of her team, but they had to know that something was amiss by now. She had given explicit orders not to fire upon the Emperor’s flagship, and as of yet no bombardment had been directed at them either. She couldn’t imagine being in Senya’s position, being forced to work against her own children, but the woman had given her no reason to question her loyalty so far.

It was just a miserable situation to be involved all round.

Jorgan looked up as she approached. “What’s going on, Commander?” he asked, his voice a low growl. “The Councillor is in a bad way- we don’t have time to sit here in a standoff with the Emperor.”

“We will not be,” she said, already taking note of the other few vessels in the hangar bay. There was a pair of twin-sized shuttles on the far side, neither of them intended for deep space travel- they were limited range vessels only, meant to ferry personnel from one cruiser to another on demand. They would be suitable for what she needed. “Get Colonel Hervoz and her father to the Gravestone, and make sure the hyperdrive is primed for jump.”

Senya stepped forward, her face ashen. “Commander,” she began, but Colonel Hervoz cut her off.

“Jus’ shoot th’ motherfucker out of the sky,” she slurred, her words hard to parse past her swollen lip.

Tahrin gestured brusquely. “You have your orders, Major,” she said, in the tone of a woman who expected to be obeyed instantly and without question.

Aric’s expression was grim, but he nodded; Councillor Hervoz was already aboard the shuttle, and he ushered the rest of the op team onboard, stooping to hook a steadying hand under Colonel Hervoz’s arm. When she protested weakly and tried to push off from him, mumbling something about her desire to confront the Emperor in person, her legs quickly sagged out from under her. Jorgan sighed, and quickly scooped her up into his arms, carrying his small but ferocious wife into the shuttle.

It left Tahrin alone with Senya, and she had an inkling how this was going to play out already. “You’d best step aboard, Master Tirall,” she said, hands clasped before her.

Senya instead looked out to the edge of the hangar bay, where the safety fields kept the atmosphere within the ship stable, and beyond which the Gravestone and the flagship were both visible, hanging silently against the stars. “My children are aboard that ship,” she said quietly.

Tahrin inclined her head. “They are,” she said simply. “It is Arcann’s flagship, after all.”

She turned back to her, her eyes haunted. “What do you intend with my children, Lord Wrath?”

“I might ask the same of you, Master Tirall. When you joined my Alliance, you were adamant that your loyalties were without question-”

“And they still are,” she said quickly, half lifting a hand as if to reach for her before realising the foolishness in such a gesture, and letting it fall back to her side hopelessly. “I want peace for the galaxy, Commander.”

“Your children currently represent a significant impediment to that, Master Tirall.”

Senya bowed her head miserably. “ I am well aware of that,” she said quietly.

“Then what are you doing here?”

In an agonized whisper, she said “I can’t let you kill them.”

Tahrin was grateful that her helmet meant she was not expected to make eye contact with the other woman. “That is not your decision to make,” she said solemnly.

Her headset comm crackled again and Captain Vortena came through the speaker once more. “Commander? What’s the plan? Still got an enemy ship off the port side.”

She stared across at Senya, and the other woman stared back, bold in her grief and unswayed by the faceless mask she wore. The tension dragged out, a deep and yawning space like the distance between the ships, empty and cold and deadly.

“Commander?”

She put a hand up to her ear. “Keep the shields charged and the hyperdrive primed,” she said quietly. “Make sure Councillor Hervoz receives what medical care we have on hand, and await my further instructions.”

“But-”

“Do not engage with the enemy vessel,” she continued.

“What? But-”

“That is an _order_ , Captain Vortena.” She cut the line, and gestured to Senya instead. “Come with me, Master Tirall. And fit your helmet, if you please. I’ll not have you walking around exposed to blaster fire.”

The relief on Senya’s face was so palpable that Tahrin could feel it through the Force, a not insignificant flicker that made her grimace beneath the privacy of her mask. “Thank you, Commander, thank you so much-”

“Do no thank me,” she said curtly, turning on her heel and marching towards the far side of the hangar, where the twin shuttles were waiting. Was there a part of her, that awkwardly protective part of her heart, that felt some sense of kinship with Senya for her desperation to protect her children? Without question. Did she also recognise that Senya’s presence aboard the flagship would be a distraction at the very least, and another element she could use in her arsenal against Arcann?

Absolutely.

As she walked to the first of the twin shuttles, she sent the last round of orders through to Major Jorgan. “Hold position until I have boarded the flagship,” she said, trusting that Senya would be following her as ordered. The airlock disengaged on the twin shuttle, and the door slid open to reveal the small interior, scarcely large enough to fit the two chairs within; she stepped to the side and gestured for Senya to take the pilot’s seat, not saying a word to her and receiving no response in return.

The airlock sealed behind them, the pressure sharp for a moment before her body adjusted. Senya took to the controls in silence, powering up the engines as Tahrin took the gunner’s seat behind her; there was a familiar and bizarre moment of heaviness, when the ship pushed off from the floor of the hangar bay and gravity fought for a moment to keep them there, and then the shuttle was moving and the moment passed.

Behind the hangar bay, infinity fell away below and above them, as they began the perilous journey from the cruiser to the flagship. They were silent but for the dull roar of the engines, and the occasional beep of the sensors on the dash. This was the moment when Arcann was most likely to attack- when they were helpless, unable to attack or defend, perilously suspended between ally and enemy with no place to retreat to. If he was going to gamble on his ability to survive an assault by the Gravestone, it would be now.

But no attack came, and the flagship drew closer in the viewport; the sensors flashed to indicate the guidance lock directing them to a waiting hangar bay.

“I trust I can rely on you not to do anything foolish, Master Tirall,” she murmured, her voice scarcely loud enough to be heard over the engines.

There was an armed guard waiting for them, two golden-clad Knights at the head of a squad of Skytroopers, and with them, a hauntingly tall woman in white and black armour who radiated energy as if she were a star. Tahrin could sense her even through the ship’s plating, and she had faced and killed enough Exarchs to recognise one even at a distance.

“You have nothing to fear from me,” Senya said, just as quietly.

They both climbed to their feet as the shuttle settled, the engines whining as they slowly powered down. Senya went to move towards the door of the little craft, but Tahrin put a hand on her arm to stop her; even though the both of them were wearing helmets, she could tell that the other woman was avoiding looking at her. Outside the shuttle, she could hear the Exarch barking orders to her squad, clearly enamoured with the sound of her own voice.

“I know I have nothing to fear from you,” Tahrin said simply, “because should the need arise, I will kill you as easily as I will kill your children.”

Senya said nothing.

“Just do not do anything to necessitate that possibility,” Tahrin said.

She heard her take a shuddering breath. “Would you not fight to the death for your children, Lord Wrath?” she whispered.

Tahrin fought the urge to roll her eyes. “Why do you think I am even here, Master Tirall?”

Saying that, she turned on her heel and marched to deactivate the airlock.

* * *

Arcann stalked back and forth across the observation lounge, the large window offering him an unhindered view of the tense scene they found themselves caught up in. He had watched the tiny speck of a shuttle make its’ way from the battlecruiser to the flagship, quickly followed by another that travelled from the battlecruiser to the Gravestone. The urge to fire upon the latter was strong- he had the Wrath as a prisoner upon his ship at that point, which left the other shuttle as a liability. The Gravestone could not fire upon him while he held the Wrath at his mercy, so the opportunity to cripple the Alliance and crush their morale with the deaths of such high ranking personnel was immensely tempting...

But the moment passed, and he hesitated for too long to give the order; the shuttle was swallowed up by the Gravestone’s shadow, the shields flickering for a brief moment to allow it passage.

_Cowardice._

He gritted his teeth beneath his mask, and tried to ignore the screaming voice in his head.

_Indecisive worm._

He paced more aggressively, clenching his hands into fists at his sides.

_Pathetic._

He snarled, turning sharply on his heel and punching the nearest wall with his robotic arm; the impact rattled all the way up through his shoulder, jarring badly, but he ignored it. The panel was crumpled as easily as if it were a piece of flimsi, and the ease with which he could destroy his supposedly indestructible flagship- the height of technological advancement in the galaxy- just aggravated him further. He was supposed to be the most powerful, yet here he sat, held hostage by a ship that had been dragged from a swamp only a few months earlier. He was supposed to be unquestionable, and yet the Wrath challenged him at every turn, mocking him publicly at every opportunity.

He was supposed to be the Emperor, and yet he was here at Vaylin’s suggestion, he was following Vaylin’s orders, Vaylin who had so much more attention from mother and father and Thexan, Vaylin who was so much more powerful than he was, Vaylin who-

He slammed his fist against the same panel again, and it fell from the wall with a clatter.

The holo by the wall chimed, and he hesitated for a moment- coward- before storming over to answer it. Exarch Varless, the Security Commander for the flagship, bowed sharply as she appeared in his view, her head bowed out of reverence. “Yes?” he snapped.

“The Lord Wrath is aboard, your Majesty,” she said, her voice distorted by her own helmet. “She has a companion. Your orders, sire?”

_Kill them both._

Why was he bothering with this foolish notion of parley in the first place? He shouldn’t even have to acknowledge an insect like the Wrath- he was an Emperor, ruler of all, and she was _nothing_. What lineage did she have, what titles? What had she done that could measure even a fraction of what he had accomplished, of what he had endured? She was nothing. She was a parasite. She was an annoyance he should have snuffed out years ago.

“I did not give permission for a companion,” he found himself saying instead. “They are to remain aboard their shuttle. I will only allow the Wrath to enter my company.”

She nodded sharply. “As you say, your Majesty.”

She left him alone again, alone with the silence, alone with his thoughts. Alone, alone, always alone. He had no idea where Vaylin had gone. Waiting to strike? Lured him away, away from the throne, away from Zakuul, waiting waiting, everybody was against him, everybody wanted to kill him-

_Everybody except Thexan and Kol’aya._

He snarled at himself, infuriated that the two of them would intrude on his thoughts even here, even in his moment of triumph. He did not need the weakness that came from needing another- he didn’t need anybody! Not a fool of a man who sacrificed his own life for him, not a fool of a woman who risked her life for his.

_Nothing._

He was alone.

It was how it was meant to be.

He brooded in silence as he waited, staring out at the stars, trying to shake off the uneasy ripples of foreboding that slithered over his skin. When the footsteps sounded again, echoing through the hollow space of the room, he did not turn immediately. “The Lord Wrath,” came the announcement, and he still did not turn.

“Leave us,” he growled, the words unfurling slowly, prowling out to fill every corner of the room. A threat and a promise, rich with violence and hate.

He could feel her- the Wrath. Her presence was like a stone weighing down a length of silk, heavy and cold and inevitable. He could taste hints of his father’s cruelty in her shadow, the remnants of her service as his attack dog; he wondered if she would lunge at him like a rabid beast, if he kept his back turned for too long.

“Tell me why I should not just have you put down like the dog that you are,” he said quietly, each word clipped and sharp and dripping with hate.

He turned at last, to see what impact his words might have had, and quelled his disappointment when he saw the same mirrored, corroded helmet she had worn during their brief holocall. She was relaxed, her hands clasped behind her back, and she scarcely even looked human. “Your hostility is unwarranted,” she said, her voice distorted and gravelly from the helmet’s filters. “I have complied with every demand you have made of me so far.”

“You have defied and taunted me for _years_ now!” he roared, his temper surging to the surface almost instantly. “If anything, your compliance today is nothing but a further mockery!”

He felt the cold of her powers drape over him, as if his clothes were very abruptly drenched with icy water. “ _Enough_ ,” she said darkly, inclining her head ever so slightly as if she were looking down her nose at him- a ridiculous notion, given that she was almost a head shorter than him. “You squall and spit like a child-”

“Do not speak to me as if I were a child!”

“Then do not act like one, and I will treat you like an equal.”

“Ha!” Her irreverence was so galling that it was amusing. “You think yourself my equal? You, who crawled in the dirt and ran about for Valkorion like the brainwashed curr that you are- where were you when he shaped us into weapons, and destroyed our childhood inch by inch? Where were you on the killing fields of Korriban, or the consuming hollowness of Nathema? You know _nothing_ of the suffering I have endured to reach this place, and no one- not even you!- can take it from me!”

His shouts echoed around the chamber, slowly fading away as the tension crackled in the air. The Wrath did not move, and did not seek to interrupt him, instead standing silently until his words fell away. Arcann breathed heavily through his nose, his blood racing in his veins. Kill her, kill her, coward coward coward, kill her, kill her-

She reached up, her hands going to the clasps where her helmet met the neck guard of her armour; there was a faint hiss, a click, the sound of the seals disengaging. She pulled the helmet up and over her head, shaking free dark hair-

- _hair as dark as Thexan’s_ -

-and raising her head to face him, the left side of her face scarred and lumpy from an old injury-

- _scars as rough and ugly as his own_ -

-and her stormy grey eyes met his-

- _eyes as grey as Thexan’s_ -

-and she stared at him. Openly, unabashedly, while he felt his whole world fall apart. She tucked the helmet under her arm, her stance wide and confident, as if nothing about this situation was daunting to her in the slightest. “And where do you think Valkorion honed his craft to begin with?” she asked, her voice clear and crisp now without the filters in the helmet to mask it. The way she spoke, the haughty inflection in her words, all he could hear now was Vaylin. “The training you endured, the rituals- Vitiate has had centuries with which to perfect his abuse, and unless we stop him, we will not be the last.”

His heart was hammering in his throat, and he wanted to throw up. “We?” he said hoarsely. “There is no _we_.”

She didn’t even flinch. “You want to put an end to Valkorion’s reign of terror, as do I- so yes, in this instance, there is a we-”

“ _Who are you?_ ” he snarled, his voice pitching upwards and breaking on an almost hysterical note. He was shaking, and he hadn’t felt this frightened since the first day after his father’s disappearance. He’d seen her pictures, studied her files, but he’d never really seen _her_ \- not until she stood here before him, every inch the cold embodiment of everything that had terrified him in his father. He shook his head, slowly at first, but with increasing emphasis, as if denial could make the situation more tolerable; but even as he tried, he could feel it in his bones. The connection, the tug of someone like him in the vicinity, like a welcome and a waning at the same time.

It felt like the bond he'd shared with Thexan, only fainter and more complicated. Closer to what he felt with Vaylin, but far more dangerous.

“I should hope by now it would be obvious,” she said.

His sister.

“That is impossible,” he said, choking on the words. “You are his servant-”

“I was his _slave_ ,” she corrected. “The two are very different states of being.”

“ _Liar_ -”

“Nahut was lost to the darkness, but that does not mean that they ceased to exist-”

“Do not quote my own people’s faith at me!” He lashed out a hand towards her, golden lightning searing out of his palm; she put up a hand almost calmly and _caught it_ , letting the surge of electricity seethe down her arm and through her body. He could see her grimace, see the rigid cut to her shoulders as the pain racked her body, but she still did not flinch. “You are nothing but his dog! You are nothing to me!”

The lightning flickered over her face, casting unholy shadows that made her features sharper and demonic; he had no warning when she attacked, one moment standing prone with his lightning immobilising her, and the next vanishing from his line of sight as a wave of power sent him tumbling backwards, flailing end over end before he came to a thundering halt against the far window. She straightened slowly, brushing her hands over herself as if she was ridding herself of a fine layer of dirt, as if the entirety of his fury and his hatred of her was nothing more irksome than some flecks of dust.

“I did not want it to come to this, Arcann,” she said coldly, and he could feel the temperature in the room dropping as he scrambled to his feet. Behind him, he could see tendrils of ice snaking over the window, as if the painful cold of the vacuum was creeping into the chamber with them. By the time he had his lightsaber drawn, the cold was already painful enough that his exposed skin burned from it- and at the other end of the room, swathed in power so immense that he couldn’t even begin to comprehend it, the Lord Wrath Tahrin Dara drew her lightsabers as well. “I wanted us to work together.”

“I’ll kill you, and then I’ll destroy your precious Alliance,” he hissed, sending another burst of crackling lightning towards her. She simply held aloft one of her sabers, and the lightning bounced harmlessly off the blade. “You cannot hide father forever!”

“I have no wish to hide him!” She raised her voice for the first time, a hint of anger echoing in the depths. “You vainglorious idiot, I did not want it to come to this!”

The faint sense of lurking danger that he had felt for some time now suddenly surged, and he spun on his heel just in time to see the stars lurch towards them. The bright lights sharpened and solidified, and a hundred, two hundred, three hundred- he couldn’t count how many ships in the Eternal Fleet had appeared in the viewport, a massive grid closing in like a net around him.

For the first time ever, such a sight made his blood run cold.

“My people have taken control of the Eternal Throne,” Tahrin said icily, “and the Eternal Fleet is under my command. Surrender now, or be destroyed.”  
Arcann turned slowly back towards her, the net closing tighter around him. Hate swelled within him, the likes of which he had not felt towards anyone but his father. “I will kill you-”

“You will try, and you will fail.”

He snarled- and then was violently knocked from his feet as a barrage of laser fire began to bombard the flagship. He staggered, and managed only to fall to one knee, and as he surged up again to defend himself from Tahrin’s inevitable attack, he was rather stunned to find her in much the same position as himself. Balance lost, defensive stance, eyes wide.

They stared at each other.

He bared his teeth ruthlessly, the gesture pointless given that his mask was still in place. “Your command seems not to have taken,” he snarled.

Something flickered in her eyes, the grey turning cold and hard like a wall of ice. “Perhaps,” she said, and she lifted her sabers. “But my ultimatum still stands.”

He matched her pose, lightsaber held in an offensive stance. “So be it,” he said.

There was no remorse in her eyes. “So be it,” she said.

* * *

Senya sat miserably in the shuttle, eyes closed and hands clasped in prayer as she did her best to ignore the fluttering tug and pull of her children so close at hand. This was the closest she had been to them in years- with the exception of the incident on Asylum-, and the urge to just burst out of the airlock and into the hallways to find them was all but overwhelming.

_Scyva guide me through this darkness. Set my feet upon the path I cannot see. Scyva, help me bring my children home._

She could feel Vaylin’s presence far more keenly, prowling in the vicinity like a cat stalking through the shadows at the edge of a puddle of light. She had always been far more in sync with Vaylin during their happier days, and even the years of separation and Vaylin’s abuse hadn’t served to dampen that connection. What’s more, she knew that Vaylin knew as well, and with every passing moment she had to wonder why her daughter had not come to confront her, just as she had on Asylum.

_Tyth, give me strength to fight for those who cannot. Keep my blade steady and my feet sure. Tyth, turn my rage into a shield._

Gods, but it hurt. The guilt burned at her, her shame burned at her, her failure to protect the handful of people who relied upon her for protection above all else- what good was it to be a Knight, to be beholden to protect an Empire, if she couldn’t protect her own children? Innocent, beautiful fragile creatures that they were, their powers should have been irrelevant- they were _children_. Trusting and curious and _oh_ , she had failed them so, so badly.

_Esne, let jealousy give me the courage to fight for what is mine. Let no mortal touch that which I have claimed. Esne, guard my heart against false allies._

Tahrin had forbade her from leaving the shuttle, and Exarch Varless had repeated the warning when she had collected Tahrin for her ominous meeting with Arcann. She could feel the flux and flow of the Force as the two of them bickered, at once sharp and cold and then wild and burning, and everything in her ached to go and intervene. Arcann and Vaylin had done terrible things, yes, but surely there was room for leniency? For redemption? Who was a Sith to say who was worthy of forgiveness and who was not?

_Aivela, set a fire in my heart. May my love make me unconquerable. Aivela, give me the passion to pursue the path I know to be true._

The wax and wane of Arcann and Tahrin’s argument made her cringe miserably, and she found herself climbing to her feet without meaning to. She stared longingly out of the viewport at the hangar bay, taking in the Skytroopers still standing guard, taking in Exarch Varless prowling nearby. Why was she cringing inside of a cage, instead of fighting for her children? What was she hoping to achieve, sitting here and waiting for them- they weren’t going to come meekly to her, trotting in like a line of ducklings waiting for her guidance and her love.

She needed to fight.

_Izax, Father of All, hear me now._

She pulled her lightsaber from her belt.

_Unnamed child, come home with me. Lost child, follow the lights home. Unheard child, hear me, hear me, hear me-_

An explosion rocked the hangar bay, and the shuttle went skidding sideways several feet, almost throwing her from her feet. She braced herself against the walls, and for a perilous moment it seemed as if the shuttle was going to tip over, heaving up on one landing strut as the blast from the explosion pushed at it; it clattered back down again with a teeth-jarring thump, and she was already moving for the airlock before it had finished rocking in place.

She hurtled from the shuttle and into the Skytroopers, scattering them like children’s toys thrown about in a tantrum; she swung her lightsaber around in a series of fast, jagged sweeps, slicing into each and every droid as it tried to climb back to its’ feet, until there was nothing but a puddle of broken, sparking electronics around her.

Another saber came slashing in towards her neck, and she got her own up to block it at the last second, grunting at the effort. The angle put her at a severe disadvantage against her attacker, and she gritted her teeth as she drew on every ounce of strength to push them back again, spinning to face them as she did so. It was, unsurprisingly, Exarch Varless, and the other woman snarled angrily at her from behind her own helmet, swinging her saber pike in a manner that was meant to be intimidating.

“You traitorous _worm_ ,” the Exarch snarled, and it took Senya a moment to realise that she was unrecognisable in the golden Knight armour, and Varless had no idea to whom she was speaking. “What did they offer you in order to betray your Emperor? Your people?”

Senya did not bother with any sort of witty response, instead letting her blade speak for her. She lunged in to break past Varless’ guard, well aware that the pike would be at a severe disadvantage if she could keep the fight in close quarters. Varless swept it around to parry, but too slow, and the light blades crackled and sparked angrily as they ground against each other. From outside, the bombardment against the ship continued, and she had no idea who had struck the first blow, but she knew her time was running out before the Gravestone managed to charge the Omnicannon for the final strike.

There was a spark of pain deep within her, something that came not from her own body but from elsewhere. Arcann. She could feel it now, his rage and his terror, and she knew that whatever hope she might have clung to that Tahrin might have stayed her blade was for naught. She had to get to him before Tahrin struck the killing blow, she _had_ to- and she did not have time for homicidal sycophants to block her path

She charged into Varless with her shoulder, barrelling the two of them backwards with Force-enhanced speed until they went crashing through a stack of crates. Varless went tumbling end over end, and Senya only kept her feet with extreme effort, lifting broken pieces of debris with the Force and sending them hurtling after her opponent. She got overconfident in that moment, convinced she had enough of the upper hand to finish the fight; Varless thrust out a hand from where she lay on the floor, and Senya went flying backwards through the air, losing her grip on her lightsaber as she slammed into the side of the shuttle. She choked, the crunch of the impact wrenching the air from her lungs as she sagged to the ground. Thirty feet away, Varless jumped back to her feet in one smooth moment, reaching up to grab at her shattered helmet and toss it aside, blood streaming down her face from a gash above one eye- the other eye had once been a cybernetic replacement, and now sparked and crackled from where it had clearly been crushed in the same blow

“You rebel scum,” she snarled, striding forward as Senya fought her body’s momentary weakness and tried to climb back to her feet. She gasped hoarsely when she felt invisible fingers claw their way around her throat, hefting her upwards without any efforts and pinning her against the side of the shuttle. “You are a blemish on the face of Zakuul’s glory, and your petty rebellion will die here today with you.”

She grasped futilely at the invisible fingers, scrabbling desperately for air, but Varless had caught her in the worst moment possible, and it only tightened the vice around her throat even further.

“I cannot _wait_ to present your head to the High Justice,” Varless said, coming to a stop before her.

Senya closed her eyes and cast her mind out through the space of the hangar bay, searching desperately through the wreckage for her fallen lightsaber. She found it, half underneath the ramp of the shuttle, and she called it to her with every ounce of strength still in her body.

There was a surging hum-

-and she fell heavily to the ground, the power keeping her from her feet suddenly gone; she grunted, and scrambled backwards, eyes flying open just in time to see her lightsaber embedded in the side of Varless’ head. The Exarch kept her feet for a second longer, maybe more, and then she slowly keeled over backwards, the lightsaber disengaging and rolling away.

She scrambled to her feet, gasping for air; her throat was burning, but she still made sure to check that Varless was indeed dead before turning her back on her. The remaining eye was glassy and empty, and the smell of burning flesh and hair was thick in the air; if it hadn’t been for her helmet filtering the worst of it, she might’ve vomited. Unable to help herself, she straightened and stood over her for a moment.

“That’s Empress scum to you,” she said.

She turned and fled deeper into the collapsing ship, in search of her children.

* * *

Vaylin was seething in her private quarters aboard the flagship when the Eternal Fleet arrived- Arcann had called it sulking, but what exactly was she supposed to do? He’d forbade her from being present for his precious little meeting with the Wrath, dismissed her like she was a damned child, and the knowledge that Mother was with the rebels on the Gravestone was like a fucking knife in the heart all over again.

Seeing her on Asylum had been the lowest blow, confirmation of everything she hated about herself and everything the dark little voices inside whispered to her on her worst days. _Everyone hates you, everyone leaves you, look how much Mother hates you, she’d rather kill you than love you, everybody wants you dead in the end._ She could still feel her, close despite the physical distance between them, and it hurt so much- it was like there was a black hole in her chest where her heart should have been, infinitely cold and burning the flesh around it, aching and eating and swallowing her up from the inside out.

So she was distracted and she was angry, and she probably missed the warnings she might otherwise have felt like nails over her scalp- but she was sitting in the window of her quarters when the space outside was suddenly illuminated with a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, more flashes of light than she could count as the Eternal Fleet appeared outside. She half rose from her seat, a frown growing slowly on her face.

And then they began to fire.

The bombardment slammed against their shields, and she went toppling over backwards onto the floor, her hooded cape getting wrapped around her torso as she scrambled to get back to her feet. She stared, not quite able to believe what she was seeing, as the ongoing flashes of light as the laser fire bounced off of their shielding slowly burned at her eyes. From somewhere deep within the ship, alarms began to sound, and an automated voice began to drone.

“Warning. Enemy contact. All personnel to stations, repeat, all personnel to stations.”

She turned and sprinted over to the door, slapping her hand against the comm. “Bridge,” she snarled.

“Princess,” came the harried response, and for once she did not bother to correct them on her proper title, “we haven’t- I mean, we don’t-”

“Can you send through an override command?” she snapped, drumming her fingers irritably against the wall.

“Negative, Princess- I mean, we tried that immediately, as per protocol, and it did nothing-”

“Hail them.”

There was a moment of silence, and then- “They have blocked our transmission, Princess Vaylin.”

She gritted her teeth, glancing over her shoulder; she was marginally mollified to see that the Gravestone was not spared from the bombardment, and that the lumbering, ugly ship was currently trying to move into position to return fire. If they got caught in the crossfire of that... “Where is my brother?” she said, turning back to the comm panel.

“His Majesty is still on the observation deck, Princess.”

Someone had to be responsible around here- someone had to actually step up and take control instead of letting themselves be consumed by hysterical vengeance against an imagined enemy. If it wasn’t going to be Arcann, that meant her. “Abandon ship,” she said, hating herself for the weakness that decision hinted at. “We can regroup on Bakura.”

“But what about the Emperor?” came the panicked response.

She took a deep breath. “I’ll take care of him,” she said.

It was an ominous choice of words, she realised that, but she meant it earnestly. Gods above and below, he frustrated her sometimes with his cowardly indecision, but she loved him- he was all she had left in the world, after all. She didn’t want him to die just because he was unable to commit to any course of action and instead froze in panic sometimes. He was an idiot, but he was her idiot brother, and there was nothing more terrifying to her than the prospect of being alone in the universe.

Well. Alone in the universe _again_.

She sprinted through the halls towards the observation deck, vaulting over the flaming pieces of debris that barred her path; she put her arm over her mouth eventually, coughing as the smoke grew thicker and the atmospheric cycle controls began to fail. There were alarms blaring shrilly, and she wanted to press her hands to her ears and scream at them to shut up, shut up, _shut up_. The elevator didn’t work when she slammed her hand against the button repeatedly, so gritting her teeth angrily, she clawed her fingers into the seal between the door, feeling her fingernails break and bend as she slowly jimmied the door open; with a final snarl, she wrenched the panels apart, the metal bending like it had been blown open from inside by an explosion.

Shimmying into the lift shaft, she looked up to the floor above her, spotting the tiny edge of the platform where the doors were; bracing herself, she lunged upwards, bouncing off the opposite wall to propel herself to the ledge. She sent a wave of power barrelling out ahead of her, and the doors on the upper level went shattering outwards in a cloud of broken shards and shrapnel; it cut at her sleeves as she launched herself through, a thousand sharp and bloody little cuts over her arms and her legs and her body. For a moment she felt the same rush of adrenalin that she had in the past, back on Nathema, when she’d done this deliberately to prove to herself that she was still alive, to ruin their pretty perfect tattoos and show that she still had control of herself in some small way.

And then the moment passed, and every cut burned bright and sharp as she staggered back to her feet and kept running.

The ship shuddered, and the pressure against her ears soared; she snarled and pressed her hands to the side of her head, waiting to see if the atmosphere in the ship stabilised. Nothing happened, and floor beneath her feet seemed instead to be listing badly to one side.

Not a great sign.

Bloodied and breathing heavily, she sprinted down the increasingly angled corridor, bursting into the observation deck in much the same manner that she’d lunged from the elevator shaft. She didn’t have time for malfunctioning electronic systems, and her fingernails were already torn and ragged from her first attempt to do things in a more mundane fashion. The observation deck was a mess, and she could scarcely see past the smoke in the room; coughing, she put an arm up to cover her mouth again, squinting into the murk. “Arcann!” she shouted, her voice all but swallowed up by the screeching of metal as the ship began to tear itself apart. “Arcann, where are you?”

There was a gust of air from up the corridor, something collapsing behind her, and it pushed the smoke away enough for her to make out the ruins of the room. Part of the ceiling had come down, sparking wires and broken metal turning the path into a debris field- and opposite her, near to the window, a Knight was standing over Arcann’s bloodied, unconscious body.

Something in her snapped.

She screamed, and the debris and shrapnel strewn about the room went flying; the Knight was hit in the shoulder by a piece of metal and staggered back a step, lurching around to face her as she began to stalk forward, rage and hatred and agony seething within her. How dare they take Arcann from her, how dare they hurt her brother, how dare, how dare, she’d kill them, she’d kill everyone-

“ _Vaylin!_ ”

That voice.

She froze.

The Knight was holding up one hand towards her, half in surrender and half pleading, and the other hand was fumbling with the helmet. She stared, her heart pounding so hard in her chest that it felt like her ribs were breaking, as the Knight cast aside the helmet, and turned to face her instead as her mother. “Vaylin, please,” she said, reaching out to her imploringly, while still keeping Arcann behind her.

She was breathing so hard that it was hard to speak, the smoke turning her throat to ribbons. “What are you doing?” she hissed, the sound scarcely human.

“Vaylin, please, you’ve got to listen to me- I came here to save you-”

“ _Did you do this to him?_ ”

Senya glanced back at Arcann briefly, her face agonised. “I wasn’t fast enough,” she said, and the look on her face made Vaylin want to scream when she looked back to her. “I know I never am, but I-”

“ _You did this!_ ” she screamed, feeling tears on her cheeks now. “This is your fault, _he’s dead because of you!_ ”

“Vaylin, please!”

She screamed, a creature of nothing but hate and fury and grief; she found her lightsaber in her hand, and she turned it on with a ruthless sweep. It could not have been more different to that night on Nathema- fire instead of rain, choking smoke instead of the cold emptiness of Nathema’s atmosphere, no collection of dead and discarded zealots at their feet-, but she felt the same furious violence and shame that she had felt that night, the same overwhelming hatred that her mother had resigned her to this without so much as a backwards glance, only coming for her too late, only coming when there was no hope for her.

She was too late again, and now Arcann was dead, and Vaylin was alone.

She was alone.

She screamed and screamed, and she launched herself forward- only to go flying backwards, a force not of her own making sending her skidding out into the corridor, coming perilously close to impaling herself on her own lightsaber. Heaving herself up onto her hands and knees, she looked up just in time to see Arcann lowering his remaining arm, his face turned towards her.

He-

_He chose Mother?_

There was a stunningly loud crunch near to her, and she covered her head with her hands as the corridor collapsed around her; she thought she heard someone calling her name, but decided that was just another fantasy.

Because in the end, she was alone.

She was always alone.

* * *

Kol’aya sat in the back of the shuttle, hands hanging between her knees as she watched Thexan pace frantically. “You breathing?” she asked, trying to make it sound funny even if she didn’t particularly feel like being funny right now.

He ran a hand through his hair for what seemed like the millionth time, his face pale enough that he looked like he was about to be ill. “Are we there yet?” he called instead, directing his question through the open door to the pilot.

An aggrieved sigh came through the door. “As I have already said, Master Tirall, there is nothing I can do to make the ship travel faster than hyperspeed,” Master Dawnstar said, the patience in her voice wearing thin.

“How far now?”

A beat of silence, and Kol’aya could practically hear Kylaena counting to ten in her head. “We should be finishing the jump in approximately two minutes,” she said.

Thexan nodded, but kept pacing, and Kol was exhausted just looking at him. “Thexan, bud, you’ve gotta take it easy,” she said. “You’re gonna give yourself an aneurysm if you stay this stressed-”

“She’s going to kill him,” he hissed instead, no malice in the sound; rather, it seemed like he couldn’t really manage much more than a whisper without throwing up right now. “I can feel it now, they’re both in terrible pain. If she hasn’t already killed him-”

“Look, I don’t know how the Force stuff works, but surely if you can still feel him, uh, being in pain and shit, that has to mean he’s still alive? Yeah?”

His eyes were wide and haunted, dark circles around them as if he hadn’t slept in days. “I haven’t been able to feel him this strongly in years,” he whispered.

It was exhausting just looking at him. “And I’m sure you’re gonna feel him for years to come,” she said, then frowned. “That, uh, that sounded better in my head.”

Her gaff didn’t seem to amuse him, and he resumed his pacing without missing a beat.

“We’re coming up on the coordinates,” Kylaena called. “In three, two, one-”

There was a faint shudder as the ship passed from one realm to the other, sloughing off speed as it decelerated rapidly; outside the viewport, the swirling, sickening blue of hyperspace turned to frozen lines, and then the pinpricks of black lunged towards them, enveloping the ship and resolving as the inky darkness of regular space.

A barrage of laser fire slammed into them, and Kylaena swore, wrenching hard on the controls as Thexan went tumbling head over heels and Kol went slamming back up against the wall. “The Eternal Fleet is here!” she called.

Thexan lunged for the cockpit, closely followed by Kol, and she felt her stomach drop into her shoes as she took in the scene before them. The were hundreds- if not thousands- of ships arrayed against them, with three mismatched vessels arrayed before them in varying stages of counterattack. The Gravestone had shields mostly intact, but was struggling to come about in order to return fire, whereas the lone Zakuulan cruiser was sinking slowly in a sad, crumbling wreck, gradually being pulled in by Bakura’s gravitational pull. Between them, with explosions racking the frame and pieces breaking away from it, was a craft she had to assume was Arcann’s flagship.

It was not in a good way.

“Why is the Fleet firing on Zakuulan ships?” she shouted, as Kylaena expertly weaved in and out of the oncoming bombardment. “Do you suppose Vaylin turned on Arcann?”

“Not my top priority right now,” Kylaena shouted back, slamming a hand against the comms panel. “Gravestone! What is your status?”

There was a crackle of static, and then Koth’s voice came through, sounding more pissed than panicked. “Uh, shields holding, Omnicannon charging- what are you guys doing here?”

“Prisoners?”

“Secure. In need of a medic, but all accounted for.”

“Then why are you still here? Is your hyperdrive malfunctioning?” Kylaena performed a dizzying spin that sent them barrelling between the laser bolts from a dozen ships or more, dancing between them with nary an inch of space to spare. Kol clung desperately to the wall, her lekku swinging about wildly and smacking her in the face no matter how many times she tried to tuck it back over her shoulder.

“Negative, Master Dawnstar, but we are waiting on the Lady Tahrin and Senya.”

Beside her, Thexan grew almost impossibly pale- impressive, given how pale he’d been to start with.

Kylaena grunted in frustration, taking them in far closer to the Fleet than Kol would have preferred; they zipped in between the arms of the ships, weaving through them like a needle through cloth. “Where are they?” she snapped.

Koth sounded just as strained on his end. “On Arcann’s goddamn flagship! But I reckon they’ve got maybe a minute or so before the shields give out-”

“There!” Thexan shouted, a finger stabbing past them to point desperately towards a small dot emerging from the underbelly of the flagship. “There, there, that’s the one!”

“Uh, yeah, can’t see what you’re pointing at your, uh, your Majesty, but they’ve been firing off escape pods for the last ten minutes or so-”

“It’s not an escape pod,” Kylaena said grimly, correcting her path to take them in pursuit of the small shuttle that was barrelling as fast as it could away from the confrontation.

Kol glanced at Thexan, who was gripping the back of the seat in front of him so fiercely that the plastic was bending. “Thexan?”

He looked haunted. “Arcann,” he said hoarsely, and she felt her belly flutter uncomfortably. “And mother.”

“But not Tahrin?” Kylaena asked over her shoulder, not privy to the look that passed between Kol’aya and Thexan.

He climbed over the chair like it was a piece of playground equipment, thudding heavily into the seat as he tried to hail the shuttle with shaking hands; Kylaena cast him a filthy look. “It’s fine, I wasn’t using that at all,” she muttered, keeping at her evasive maneuvers as she tried to keep pace with the shuttle.

“Mother?” Thexan asked insistently, trying to connect over and over again. “Mother, can you hear me?” The tone kept beeping to indicate a failed connection, and Kol’aya awkwardly put her hand on Thexan’s shoulder. He didn’t seem to notice. “Mother, are you there? We’re here to help.”

There was finally a click, and Senya appeared on the dash before them; her hair was as badly askew as Thexan’s, and there was a dark mark on her forehead that could have been a burn or it could have been blood, but it was hard to tell over holo. “It’s alright, Thexan,” she said, her own voice ragged.

He let out a sob, and Kol squeezed his shoulder. “Mother, please, we can help-”

“I’m afraid not everyone shares your sentiment,” she said.

“Whatever happened with Tahrin, we can work through it! I can feel his pain, and I have Doctor Torr here with me-”

“Ma’am, if he’s in a bad way, he’s gonna need a doctor as soon as possible,” Kol interjected. “Let me help. Let us help him.”

“I- I can’t,” Senya said, her expression that of a broken woman. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Thexan was openly weeping. “Mother,” he said again.

“I’m sorry, Thexan. I love you.”

She disconnected.

The shuttle jumped away.

* * *

The end did not take him by surprise, because he had long planned for this- if anything, it was wretched how easily it came to pass. All of it was so excruciating, the war and the rebellion and the Alliance and the knowledge that his life has amounted to nothing but pain and suffering, that he will be mourned by no one.

He was too frightened to die, but he was so tired of living.

The arm is the most surprising, because it wasn’t even his real arm- why should the loss of it hurt as much as the original injury, jagged, impossibly agony that makes steel bands of his ribs, burning and suffocating as if tightens around his ribs. There is also an ugly, aching slash over his belly, a painfully ironic mirror to the blow that felled Thexan all those years ago.

At least his death would give Thexan’s spirit peace. Justice is finally served- and he finally understands. It was never about Father, Thexan had never picked Father over him. Thexan had picked him over his own life, just as he had picked Vaylin. Gods, he hoped she'd made it out of the ship. It hurt to die, far more than he was hoping it would, and he doesn't want her to go through this. He had hoped, at the end of all things, that he might finally know peace.

He can hear Thexan. He can hear his blessed brother’s voice again.

 _Soon_ , he tells himself, _soon_.

“Let me help,” Kol’aya says, and it doesn’t surprise him that she is here, his mind easing his passage into death with more pleasant memories. The two people who ever cared enough to save him, the two people who ever saw him.

He wants to thank her, for being here at the end, but it’s too late.

The darkness comes, and it’s easier to die than he realises.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for suicidal ideation, references to past child abuse, depictions of large-scale acts of war and terrorism resulting in immense loss of life

Arcann breathed out, and opened his eyes.

Around him, a white neverwhere stretched out before him, a space with no sky and no horizon and no sense of distance; his feet were planted on what felt like solid ground, but he cast no shadows when he looked down. It was bright, not quite bright enough that it hurt his eyes, but there was no discernible light source that he could see. It did not emanate from the floor, it did not beam down from above. It just... was.

He breathed in, and for the first time in a long time, his chest didn’t ache on the left. He looked down, and the breath held when he found two hands before him, both of them blood and bone and flesh. He reached out with his right hand, and ran his fingers over the back of the left; he could feel it, the faint tickle of contact and the slight pressure of the calluses on his fingertips. His hand trailed upwards, tracing the shape of his arm through his sleeve, waiting for the moment when the cruel trick would be revealed and flesh would give way to metal.

But he found no such thing- even pressing his hand to his neck, to his face, he found no scar tissue, no tender skin that protested at even slight contact.

He was whole again.

... that probably meant he was dead.

He waited for that realisation to hit him, but no consuming horror overtook him- if anything, he felt just a gentle wave of relief, like he was relaxing for the very first time in his life. Ironic, that. There was perhaps a touch of sorrow, a yearning towards his mother and his sister and the man who might possibly have been Thexan, but it was all quite muted.

He, Emperor Arcann Tirall, First of His Name, was dead.

“Not quite,” came a voice from behind him.

Being taken by surprise like that would have sent him into a panic, once upon a time, a violent frenzy at the thought that he could have been taken unawares by an assassin. Now he just turned, curious as to who else could possibly have made their way to this empty place where his soul resided. The sight behind him made him blink in surprise.

The white space was no longer empty- there was a couch behind him, or rather more of a chaise, trimmed with rich red velvet and golden thread, the cushions plump and inviting. It, like him, was resting on a space that seemed to suggest a floor but he could not see it casting a shadow, and upon the chaise was a young woman. She would not have been out of place at any one of his galas, with her long, dark hair elaborately styled as if to suggest bed-hair without any of the actual mess or tangles, wearing a long black gown with gold trim. She was barefoot, however, lounging across the chair as she was, and the bosom of the gown was cut almost indecently low-

-well. That didn’t actually mean she’d be out of place at one of his galas at all, now that he thought about it.

And now that he thought about it, he wasn’t ever going to be hosting a gala ever again. He was dead. Presumably dead people did not host or attend parties.

“We can do, when the mood strikes us,” she said, showing once again that she was capable of reading his thoughts. Such severe disrespect for privacy and personal boundaries might have infuriated him once upon a time, but right now he found it rather convenient. The young woman raised a hand, flicking it as if she meant to summon a servant, and the space around them changed. The white nothing was abruptly extravagantly decorated, with marble pillars reaching up towards a nonexistent roof, and elaborate fountains that rested upon nothing and had seemingly no source for the water that poured from the spouts. There were more lounges, and tables piled high with delicacies, and gentle string music wafted on the air.

Most surprisingly of all, there were other people milling about, the murmur of conversation dancing in between the sounds of the fountain and the music. There were servants carrying trays, and elegantly dressed noble guests; the young woman was no longer alone on the couch, and instead had a young man seated beside her, her hand clasped in his as he reverentially pressed kisses along her exposed wrist.

Peculiarly, Arcann could not make out his features; in fact, as he looked around at the assembled guests, he found that he could not make out any of their faces, as if his sight was failing in both his eyes, and the defining features were nothing but a blur. It was odd- he could see everything else perfectly clearly, but when he tried to concentrate on their faces...

“You don’t recognise any of them,” the young woman called, making sultry faces at the young man pawing at her arm. “You don’t know what they look like, because you’ve never met them.”

He frowned slightly, moving carefully between the guests as he leaned around them all to try and catch sight of any of them with more defining features. As his mysterious host had said, no matter where he looked, he couldn’t actually focus on any of them at all. “Who are they?” he asked, and his voice was far less gravelly- presumably even his vocal chords were whole in whatever this place was.

She sighed happily, the sound warm and rich. “Old friends,” she said, her bare feet comfortably placed in the lap of her faceless admirer. “Old lovers. All long gone, long gone.”

Arcann glanced over his shoulder at her. “As in... dead?”

“Yes, dear boy, they are very much deceased.”

“But we are not?”

“ _You_ are not.”

He paused. “... and you are?”

She giggled, and the sound made his skin crawl. “I _am_ ,” she said, clearly delighted. “Such a clever boy. So much more potential than I had initially thought.”

Nothing in this bizarre scene had changed at all, but it seemed to him that there was a subtly discordant note in the melody of the song, something woven in between the chords to jar ever so slightly at his senses without overwhelming him. The muted conversation around him seemed more like ferocious whispers, the sort that consumed his court whenever he walked amongst the nobles of Zakuul. “Who are you?” he asked, wondering how he could possibly fight something that was already dead.

She looked back to her consort, clearly unconcerned with his guardedness. “I have been known by many names,” she said, almost dreamily. “Conqueror. Killer. Tyrant. Disgrace-”

“Those are titles,” he snapped, his skin prickling with the unpleasant acknowledgement that all of them could very easily apply to him. He’d never particularly felt a great deal of shame about the steps he’d taken following Valkorion’s death, but here, in whatever nebulous sort of neverwhere that this prison was, he felt it in his gut, sharp and sour. “I asked for your name.”

She tsked. “You did no such thing, my dear boy- you said ‘ _who are you?_ ’. A very different question indeed to ‘ _what is your name_ ’.”

It occurred to him, on some deeper level to his thoughts, that he should be furious with her for her disrespect and her flippancy. He would never have allowed someone to speak to him like this while he had been Emperor-

“Incorrect,” she said, again proving that she had the uncanny ability to read his thoughts as plainly as if he had spoken them aloud. “You allowed _her_ to do so.”

Some of the assembled guests moved as if to help themselves to the ethereal buffet table, and the ghostly crowd parted to reveal a woman who seemed as out of place here as he himself. It was Doctor Torr- _Kol’aya_ \- and she stood alone at the party, a drink in her hand and her features far clearer than that of any of the other guests. Confusingly, while her face was visible to him, her clothing blurred and changed, flowing from one outfit to the next like watercolour paints bleeding slowly across the paper. One moment she wore dark, tight pants, the next a short skirt, now a jacket, now a blouse, and not a single one of them had any sort of defined edges. They were as insubstantial as the faces of the other guests at the party.

“You’re thinking of too much at once,” his mysterious host called. “Try to focus on one memory.”

He frowned, confused by her instructions, but nonetheless thought of Doctor Torr as she had been on Asylum. The tall boots, the short skirt. The smudges on her skin and clothing from the smoke. The vaguely distraught look on her face when he’d fallen from the control spar. And as he focused on those small details, the flickering, fluttering of her silhouette stilled and became more solid, and she stood there at the party with a drink in hand, looking to all intents and purposes like she had in the midst of his colossal failure on Asylum. Her eyes haunted and red-rimmed, her mouth twisted in anger and unhappiness.

“My my, you do have some odd desires,” his host said, and he scowled and looked back to her instead. She was eyeing Doctor Torr with unbridled interest, and for some reason that irritated him more than anything she had done so far. “Oh, for goodness sake, you are so _predictable_.”

“I didn’t say anything,” he growled.

“And it has not yet occurred to you that you do not need to say anything,” she said, her features twisted into a smirk. “There is nothing you can hide from me. Not here.”

He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, breathing sharply through his nose as he sought to control his temper. “What is this place?” he asked after a moment, hoping she would at least give him the dignity of an answer.

“It is a place of necessity. A place in between.”

“In between what?”

“Life and death. Light and dark. Humility and greed.”

“That doesn’t make _any_ sense.”

She scoffed loudly. “It doesn’t _need_ to make sense,” she said, as if she was talking to a toddler, “it simply _is_. Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean it ceases to exist or function.”

He rounded on her. “Who are you,” he snarled, “and what is this prison you have me ensnared in?”

Almost instantly, something caught at his foot, and he stumbled, falling face first onto the nonexistent ground. He growled in frustration and pushed himself up again, settling back on his calves and pausing as he took in the endless neverwhere around him, suddenly empty of everything and everyone. There was no party, no fountain; there were no faceless guests to haunt him with their eerily vacant faces. No Kol’aya.

He looked around slowly, and tried not to flinch when someone stepped in front of him, seemingly from out of nowhere.

She was short- short enough that she was only scarcely taller than him while he was kneeling, and where he had struggled to name her or recognise her earlier, there was no mistaking who she was now. Her robes were black and red, trimmed with tarnished copper, and there were two lightsabers at her hips. She carried an air of agelessness about her, the spirit of childlike frivolity, but at the same time he felt the malevolent weight of her age and her power. A dichotomy of a woman- dark and light, young and old, curious and cruel. She held a mask in her hands, the front panel of a Mandalorian helmet, and she was unmistakeable.

Darth Revan.

“You are not quite dead, Emperor Arcann, First of Your Name,” she said, and the knowledge of who she was should have been enough to have him gibbering in fear. “I have kept you from dying-”

“What do you want with me?” he asked, suddenly afraid.

She smiled, and her eyes were infinite. Terrifyingly so. “I want you to live, your Majesty,” she said. “I want you to live with the knowledge of every crime you have committed, the weight of every death you have caused, and I want you to live a very, very long time.”

He stared at her.

And then she giggled. “And I’d very much like to kill your father.”

* * *

Senya braced herself in the pilot’s seat as they broke out of hyperspace, the tiny shuttle rattling violently around her. This was not a vessel intended for lengthy hyperspace jumps, only short range reconnaissance at the absolute most, and the shudders threatening to tear the ship apart were enough to rattle the teeth from her skull. They bled off speed as they careened across the void, the sky ahead of them blissfully empty as she struggled to bring them back under control; the ship drifted badly, unable to maintain a heading as she heaved on the steering wheel, and it was a miracle in itself that they didn’t leave a trail of debris in their wake.

She heard something crack, and there was a burst of steam in the tiny cockpit; alarms screeched at her from the navigation console, the illuminated outline of the shuttle blaring red as the hull tried to cope with the stress.

With a final shudder, the ship coasted to a halt, finally losing enough speed to bring them into a relatively stationary position. Breathing hard, hands shaking, Senya waited a moment for her heart to stop racing, head bowed in exhaustion. After a moment- and far sooner than she was ready for- she reached up and unclasped the seat harness, tugging it over her head and grimacing when one of the buckles caught on her hair. She pulled her hair loose in frustration, snapping the tie around her wrist as she fumbled to her feet, adrenalin making her knees wobbly as she made her way out of the cockpit and into the equally tiny cabin in the rear.

It was not outfitted for long voyages- there was no refresher, for example, just a wall mounted unit that could be pulled down should the need arise- and she had struggled to make Arcann comfortable with what little she had available. There was barely enough space for her to move around, and the medkit was only a standard spacer pack, with only the most rudimentary of supplies. Certainly nothing that could deal with excessive smoke inhalation and lightsaber burns and the shock his body was going through from having lost a limb yet again.

She counted it a blessing that he was still breathing, at this point.

The blanket had slid off of him during the turbulence, and she bent down to pick it up off of the floor, draping it carefully back over him. His breathing was ragged, whistling through cracked, dry lips, and his skin was far too hot to the touch when she rested her hand against his forehead. Their water supplies were limited, but she still dampened an antiseptic cloth and dabbed carefully at his face, trying to wipe away more of the grime and smoke before letting it sit on his forehead in the hope it would bring him some comfort.

His eyes remained closed, and the rattle of his breath as he struggled to breathe made tears spring to her eyes yet again.

“Please,” she whispered, unsure who the prayer was even directed to, “please let him live.”

* * *

Arcann stared at Revan.

She stared back.

_What could he even say to that?_

“Well, anything, for starters,” she said, displaying again the uncanny ability to read his thoughts. “You could wail and roar about the injustice of it all, being dead while your father lives, or you could beg and plead for me to let you go.”

He stared at her, still kneeling at her feet.

She reached out and ran a finger down the curve of his cheek, and he flinched. “You have so much buried inside of you, your Majesty,” she said quietly. “So much hatred. So much terror. It boils and writhes inside of you, so much passion and violence that your skin wants to split open to let it out.”

He leaned back, and her fingers hung in the air where he had pulled himself out of her reach. Her eyebrows went up, the wicked flicker of amusement in her eyes as she gazed down at him. Ever so slowly, as if her body was a glacial retreating in the summer months, she withdrew her hand, the threat of her touch no longer something to haunt him.

It was... different, to the fear and the hatred he felt for his father. Valkorion was tainted and twisted with the perverse desire to please, to have his father’s approval for once in his life, to have someone look at him with pride and love and tell him he’d done well. He had no such prior relationship with Revan- if this ghost even was Revan-

“I am,” she said simply.

-and he had no reason to doubt that, he felt the certainty of it in his heart, but he also felt fear. Deep, cold fear, for this was a creature on par with his father, ageless and infinite and undying-

“Oh no, I’m very much dead,” she said, tucking her iconic helmet beneath her arm, held firm against the side of her body. “I have been for a very long time, and we have your father to thank for that.”

His left arm ached. “What do you want with me?” he whispered again.

She sat, crossing her legs and letting her cloak billow out behind her- but she did not sit on the floor, or what passed for a floor in this vast nothingness. Instead, she sat where she stood, so that they were eye to eye, with nothing said of the absurdity of the situation. “To be honest, at first I wanted to hurt you,” she said frankly, as if she was discussing nothing more pressing than the weather. “I was very angry, and I am nothing if not petty, and when Vitiate hurt my daughter, I thought the best thing to do would be to hurt you and your sister in return. Payback, so to speak.”

He remembered abruptly the toy holocron that Vaylin had claimed, the ridiculous little thing that had appeared in the palace years ago with no record of having arrived.

Revan nodded. “That was really me,” she said. “I am little more than a memory at times, a shadow of a soul, and I have my limitations. I needed to transport myself to Zakuul, as it was far beyond my reach in my current capacity.”

Arcann blinked.

“So I mailed myself to Zakuul, with every intention of tormenting you and Vaylin until I managed to kill one or both of you,” she said. “Vitiate tortured my children for decades, and then turned his attention to my grandchildren, and I was determined to repay blood with blood.”

This was possibly the most surreal conversation he’d ever had in his life- and even calling it a conversation was a stretch, given that he was scarcely talking.

She smirked. “I’m sorry, should I make this more familiar for you?” she asked. Nothing around them moved, and he didn’t feel himself change at all, but all of a sudden the white expanse was gone. Instead, they were in his bedchamber in the palace, lying side by side on his bed, the sheets mussed and the air thick with the smell of sex, while the stars spun lazily outside the glass behind them. Revan was wearing a mere slip of a silk robe, far too much skin on display, and her hair was appropriately tousled for the activities the scene implied. “Is this more to your taste?” she murmured, her voice husky and inviting as she traced a finger over his bare chest.

He yelped, adrenalin spiking in his veins as he hurled himself backwards; he hit his hip hard when he landed, almost winding himself, and as he tried to scrabble backwards, the scene vanished as fast as it had appeared. Revan was fully dressed again, her head cocked to the side almost curiously.

He licked suddenly dry lips. “Don’t do that again,” he said hoarsely.

“You are afraid of sex,” she said matter-of-factly.

“No I’m not,” he said quickly.

“Your panicked reaction suggests otherwise-”

“Perhaps I don’t like the implication of sex with a homicidal ghost that has admitted to wanting to kill me,” he snapped. “I’ve had _plenty_ of sex.”

“That doesn’t mean you aren’t-” She shook her head. “Nevermind.”

He gritted his teeth, awkwardly crawling into a sitting position and trying to ignore the ache in his hip. His left arm still ached terribly, too. “What is the point of all of this?” he snapped irritably. “You couldn’t torment me enough in life, so you thought to finish the job in death?”

She sighed extravagantly. “Snap and snip and snarl, can you talk like a person for two moments, or must everything be a growl and a bark?”

“Give me a gods damned straight answer instead of dancing around me like a child-”

“He hurt you.”

Three small words, so small and so concise, and yet it struck him fiercer than the lightsaber that had sliced him across the gut before he’d died. Huh, he’d forgotten about that, and now that the memory was there, of the Wrath lunging brutally at him, he could feel the faint burn of it again. He rubbed at his belly, his throat tight. “What?”

“He hurt you,” she repeated. “Your father.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

There was something deep and dark and unnervingly enormous in her gaze, like standing on the edge of a pond and realising instead that you were staring down into an unblinking eye. “I am many things, Arcann,” she said slowly, “and I have done many things. I have been called a god, by some, and a murderer, by others- but regardless of who or what I am, whether I am alive or dead, I will never condone the abuse of a child.”

He stared at her.

“Especially not one under your care,” she said, after a moment’s pause. “I sought to torment you and your sister as adults, because that seemed to me that you were fair game. But the scars he left upon you both run so deep that some of them are still bleeding, and I know all too well how much the wounds he causes can hurt.”

What was he even supposed to say to that? Was she expecting him to start weeping into her arms, to let himself come undone as he tearfully relayed every moment of abuse and neglect and torture across the years? Ha! It had made him stronger, it had made him a survivor- if anything, he merely regretted that he had not-

She reached forward and flicked him on the forehead. “Stop that,” she said crossly.

He yelped, rubbing at the spot where her fingernail had landed. “Don’t do that!”

“Then stop getting caught up in your own pity parade,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“I would have hoped that in death I would at least be afforded the peace to feel sorry for myself-”

“And I’ve already told you, you aren’t dead. Stop sulking.”

He climbed to his feet. “I don’t have to sit here and take this,” he said, smoothing out the crinkles in his clothing with jerky motions. “I am an Emperor, and I don’t have to listen to uncouth rabble like you.”

She simply raised an eyebrow at him as he turned and began marching away from her as fast as his legs could carry him, feeling her eyes burning into the back of him as he stormed off. He refused to look back, or acknowledge her in any way, even though the weight of her gaze felt heavier and heavier with each step he took; he had no idea where he was going, only that he was tired of her frivolity and her disrespect, tired of the way she looked into the heart of him and dragged the diseased and rotting parts of him to the surface. She had no right to judge him, or to keep him from death- and so what if he wanted to feel sorry for himself? He’d earned it by now, surely!

After an indeterminable amount of time- it felt like an eternity, but without landmarks to measure his progress, it could have been only ten minutes- he finally slowed his steps, the worst of the tantrum having bled out of him with the exercise. He drew to a halt, letting out a long breath as he looked around at the vast nothingness surrounding him.

As far as an afterlife went, it was excessively boring.

“Are you quite done now?”

He lurched around with his heart in his throat, to find Revan only a few steps behind him, still seated upon the air; he could not say whether she had followed him, or whether he had merely marched on the spot. “Leave me alone!”

“To what end? So that you might stomp around in circles like a squalling toddler to your heart’s content?”

If he had hair, he would have been pulling it out in frustration by now. “If you want to kill my father, leave me alone and just go do it!”

She sighed. “That was only half of my stated goal, your Majesty. If you’ll recall-”

“I don’t care about your fucking stated goals, I want you to leave me alone!”

“And yet you kept demanding with every breath that I tell you what I was doing-”

“And _you_ kept speaking in riddles and double talk, trying to aggravate me to this very point!” he bellowed. “Fuck off!”

His words echoed for a long time, as if they stood in a giant cave. Revan stared patiently up at him, her eyes unreadable as she scrutinised him; he would have turned and stormed away from her, if he didn’t suspect that it would garner him no privacy yet again. For the time being he was trapped with her, in whatever capacity that entailed, and until he could figure out how to best her-

“Vivaane,” she said abruptly, knocking him from his thoughts.

“What?”

“My name,” she said simply. “My name is Vivaane. You can call me Viv.”

He scowled. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would I call you that?”

She rose upwards, not really climbing to her feet so much as just floating upwards until they were of a similar height again. “Because before I was Revan, before I was a god, I was a young woman who was faced with the mounting responsibilities of leadership, who was influenced by the corrupting allure of power, and who made some desperately stupid decisions- decisions that cost millions of people their lives.” She smiled slowly, and her mouth appeared to be full of very sharp teeth. “I’m sure that’s something which you can relate to, hmm?”

* * *

“ _Get out of my way!_ ”

The scream tore out of her throat, ragged and half hysterical, and the phalanx of guards and Knights assembled in front of the palace scattered wildly. There was a hastily assembled barricade before the front doors, with a number of bodies and disassembled skytroopers in the space between, and Vaylin stormed straight through it as if it was nothing more than flimsi; the power rolling out ahead of her was like a tempest, burning and seething and destroying everything in her path.

There had been a coup, they said. There had been an invasion, they said. Her throne was gone, they said, her fleets snatched up, they said.

Arcann had chosen to abandon her.

Nothing and no one was going to take her home from her.

The grand gold gilt doors to the palace were half open, and there was a good number of skytroopers standing ready through the gap. Vaylin kept walking, and the expected barrage of laser fire never came; she, however, was not in a mood to appreciate this moment of peace, and threw out her arms wide.

The doors went careening inwards, snapped clean off the wall as they went smashing into the grand lobby beyond, two fifty foot panels of metal and gold and glass shearing through skytroopers and furniture without prejudice. There was a thundering cascade of shrapnel from the impact, and Vaylin walked into it without flinching; most of it bounced off of the wall of power projected ahead of her, but some of it lanced through to scratch and slash at her. The unhealed welts from the collapse of the flagship tore open so easily, and her cloak was in ragged tatters by the time she made her way across the lobby.

Wherever she found opposition, she destroyed it- every skytrooper in every hall, every room, smashed to pieces unrecognisable. This was her home, and she would not allow them to take it from her.

It was all she had left.

She would tear it down all the way to the foundations if she had to just to keep someone from taking it from her first.

When the elevator chimed- insultingly benign- and let her out before the Eternal Throne, she was in a blood frenzy the likes of which she had not experienced in any of the years since she had been freed from Nathema. The throne room was just as the palace below, strewn with the unmourned corpses of the Knights who had failed in their duty to protect her birthright, and the few Skytroopers that stood at the ready to counter her were easily swept into the depths below with a flick of her hand. It left a single droid, a Gemini by the looks of it, standing beside the throne as if in anticipation of her arrival.

Vaylin screamed, and the entire structure trembled with the power of the storm she unleashed with her rage.

She began to reach out, to pluck this insolent droid from the dais and slowly tear it apart, when the last thing she was expecting happened.

The droid kneeled.

* * *

Arcann swallowed uncomfortably. “You can’t compare yourself to me,” he scoffed, but he didn’t really believe it. “I am the son of a god-”

“And I am a god on my own merits, darling,” Vivaane said, batting her eyelashes at him. “And I think we can both agree- power earned by one’s own hand is far more satisfying, hmm?”

He gritted his teeth and looked away.

“Is that a yes?”

“You’re so annoying,” he snapped, feeling his cheeks flush in the meantime. Gods, but she reminded him of Vaylin, in a some small way- although perhaps it was just her youth that drew the comparison. Or the frivolous sense of cruelty. The almost malicious curiosity.

... alright, maybe there was more to it than just their age.

For the first time since he had awoken in this bizarre place, Vivaane did not snatch upon the thoughts in his head to further torment him with, but the twinkle in her eyes suggested she was more than aware of them. “I thought, perhaps, that we could have a talk. A heart-to-heart, so to speak-”

“I have _nothing_ to say to you,” he said, crossing his arms defensively. Izax forfend, but his left arm was aching something fierce.

Vivaane’s brow wrinkled, as if she was thinking hard, and then a look of understanding came over her. She rose up, and drew closer to him-

He took a step backwards in alarm. “What are you doing?”

-and took hold of his face in her hands, her gaze pinning his. He wanted to pull away, he really did, but he couldn’t look away from her-

“It’s not time to wake up yet,” she said gently, so at odds with the bewildering young woman who had been tormenting him so far. “Come back down again.”

Arcann took a deep breath- and found that his arm didn’t hurt anywhere near so much as it had a moment ago. Likewise, the burning ache across his stomach was gone, and the lingering pain in his shoulder and neck vanished with it. “What did you do to me?” he croaked.

She pulled away- floated away, really- and crossed her arms to match his pose. “Kept you alive by keeping you from waking too soon,” she said, and he got the impression that, in that brief moment, she was just as uncomfortable as he was. “A child is not responsible for the sins of the parent, and must instead be held accountable by their own actions-”

“What is-” The speed with which she changed directions was dizzying. “What has that got to do with anything?”

She sighed, and she looked vaguely mournful. “I tried to kill Valkorion many, many years ago, when he was known to me as Vitiate,” she said, “and now, _my_ daughter has tried to kill _you_ , Vitiate’s son, in a terrible cycle that I could never have anticipated all those years ago, when I was young and brash and convinced of my own immortality.” She laughed, somewhat bitterly. “I suppose my understanding of immortality was somewhat limited, at the time.”

He felt like he should have had something to say about that, something cutting or dismissive or even just sneering at the notion that the Wrath could best him; instead, he found himself at a loss for words, terribly confused by everything that was happening and perplexed by this bizarre woman and her need to prod at him.

“Why do you want to die, Arcann?”

The words took him by surprise- perhaps not as painful a revelation as he might have thought them to be months or weeks or even days earlier, but still surprisingly insightful. He thought to sneer at her, or scoff or deny it, but... “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I’m just... very tired, I think.”

Her expression was very solemn as she nodded, and he felt none of the callous mischief that he had felt from her before now. “And you’re afraid,” she said.

“Of my father?”

“Of many things,” she said, and the space around them began to reshape itself, the white slowly giving way to a more vibrant palette that moved without them needing to move with it. He stiffened as he recognised his throne room, the guttering flames dancing over the pools and turning the dark water to molten lava in the darkness of the stars. A hollow figure appeared at the end of the row, unmistakeable in white and purple and gold, and Arcann flinched away from the ghostly apparition of Valkorion standing beside the throne. “Your father chief among them, but there are many things that frighten you.”

“You would mock me for being rightly cautious of an abusive parent?” he said, the words sour and miserable on his tongue.

“Not at all,” she said, and he could sense no mockery from her. “He frightens me too- you forget, I think, that he was responsible for my death.” This time she did smile, a too sharp expression that drew to mind a predator. “And he did not make it an easy death, oh no. He made sure I suffered.”

The way she drifted closer to the impression of his father drew the startling comparison with Vaylin once again, and memories of the day she had finally been strong enough to face him after he’d rescued her from Nathema. She’d stood just where Vivaane stood now, malevolence and violence bleeding off of her as she’d stared at Valkorion, and though Thexan had reached for his weapon, Arcann had silently begged her to stand down, terrified of what might erupt should Vaylin try to attack their father.

How foolish, how stupid. What a stupid, pathetic fool he had been- if he had stood with Vaylin, the two of them might have stood a chance against Valkorion, they could have brought Thexan around to their side, the three of them could have fought and made themselves free-

As if on cue, the scene shifted subtly, and there were two more figures present. He let out a small sound when he recognised Thexan, standing with his lightsaber drawn and an expression of surprise on his face; he was frozen in place, just as he had been the day in question, but unlike the day in question, he himself was absent from the tableau- the other person in the scene was Vaylin, her face streaked with grime and her hair burned and matted as she stood still as a statue, fists clenched and mouth open as she raged.

Vivaane stood between them, the mournful, solemn expression back on her face as she studied his siblings. “You’re afraid of them,” she said, glancing at him as if for confirmation.

His mouth was dry, an odd sensation given that surely hydration was not an issue now that he was dead. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, but even he didn’t believe it. He wasn’t sure why he was inclined to talk now, but it was... different. Seeing them here.

She drifted around Thexan, frozen in the moment of his great betrayal. “You know he’s alive,” she said, and it made his heart lurch to hear it.

“A Republic pretender only-”

“You can’t lie to me in here. I know you don’t believe that. You haven’t believed it for years.”

“He couldn’t have survived the injury,” he countered.

“ _You_ survived that injury,” she said pointedly, gesturing to his stomach.

He could feel his heart in his throat, threatening to choke him. “If he was alive, I’d be able to sense him,” he started to say but she shook her head.

“You know as well as I do that trauma can do extraordinary things to the body and the mind,” she said, looking at him pityingly. “Including severing a Force bond.”

Arcann had no answer for her that wouldn’t reduce him to angry, terrified tears, so he said nothing.

Vivaane cocked her head to the side, assessing him curiously. “So the question remains- why are you afraid of Thexan?”

He opened his mouth, struggling to make a sound come out that wasn’t the croak that preceded weeping. “Because...” What could he even say? “Because I can’t forgive myself for what happened that day, and I don’t know what I would do if he didn’t forgive me either-”

“You already know he has. I’ve seen those sappy holovids he sends you.”

“But that just makes it worse,” he said, running a hand over his head; he had to move, he had to get the energy out, he had to do something other than stand here and stare at Thexan in the moment when he killed him. “I can’t- I can’t... he _shouldn’t_ forgive me-”

“Why?”

“ _Because I killed him!_ ” Gods, why was this so hard to understand? “Because I lost control, because I let my rage blind me, because I destroyed the only good thing in my life-”

“That sounds a little more like you’re angry at yourself, than at him,” she said, raising an eyebrow.

He spun away, breathing heavily, because if he had to stare at Thexan’s mild look of surprise for a moment longer he was going to scream. “I- I destroyed him, I humiliated him, the Republic, they- they paraded him around like a pet, they humiliated him and it was all my fault-”

“He seems to be more than fine with his experiences, given that he married one of the Republic’s greatest champions.”

His breathing was ragged, and his eyes burned. “I... he is...”

Vivaane appeared before him. “Yes?” she said, something expectant in her face.

“He _survived_ ,” he said, his voice an agonized rasp. “He survived and- and... he’s happy, and he’s healthy, and he is no worse for any of his experiences, and I am- am...”

For a moment, for a flicker, there was a searing surge of pain, agony such as he hadn’t felt since the sands of Korriban when he had been hit by the missile explosion in the first place. He looked down, and his arm was gone, his clothing drenched with sweat and blood and dirt, torn asunder, and he couldn’t see out of his left eye, his face burned, his skin burned, his face burned-

“Shh.” There were hands on the sides of his face, cool and calm, and he looked up into a pair of brown eyes. Kol’aya had brown eyes too. “Leave that pain behind you for now. You’re not ready.”

He let out a miserable sound, humiliating even if he’d been alone, and lowered his head, his face working desperately to contain the storm of weeping- but the pain was gone again, and his body was whole. “He can survive without me,” he said, his voice cracking, “and all I am without him is- is this wretched _creature_ -”

“This ‘ _wretched creature_ ’ seemed to do well enough for itself these last five years,” she said, letting go of his face and stepping back.

He heaved in a breath, rubbing aggressively at his eyes in an attempt to smear away the tears burning there. “It’s not the same.”

She scoffed, putting her hands on her hips. “You claimed the throne, invaded the entirety of the galaxy, blockaded multiple capital worlds, fucked a good half of Zakuul’s population-”

For some reason, that last point made him feel awkward. “How is that relevant?” he snapped hoarsely.

“Had at least three operas written about you, increased your personal wealth tenfold, held the controls to the most powerful fleet in modern history, killed billions-”

His cheeks were flaming. “That’s not what I meant at all!”

“Abandoned your sister-”

With a snarl, he rounded on her, only to find instead that she had somehow moved him, and he came face to face with the frozen form of Vaylin. This close, she looked even worse, her eyes red rimmed and her irises bloodied and burnt from the seething power within her; there were tear tracks on her face, cutting through the grime, and her body was a latticeworks of cuts and slashes, her clothing little more than charred ribbons by now. Her expression was so powerful, so agonizing to look upon- rage and hate and grief all roiling together into something so painful that he couldn’t even look at her for long.

“You are afraid of her because she is powerful,” Vivaane whispered, somewhere close to his ear.

Somewhat entranced, Arcann shook his head.

“You are afraid because she is angry.”

Again, he shook his head. “No,” he said.

“Then if you are afraid of your brother for surviving and for forgiving, why are you afraid of your sister?”

He raised his eyes back to Vaylin, to the vacant gaze that stared right through him. “Because that used to be me,” he said.

* * *

Tahrin raised a hand for quiet, biting back a grimace as the gesture pulled at muscles still healing. “I believe we are drifting from the point,” she started to say, but the energy in the room did not abate in the slightest.

“What _point?_ ” Master Dawnstar said loudly, not quite shouting but definitely as close to anger as she had ever seen the woman. The council chambers were practically crackling with dissent, and Tahrin found herself quite alone, to her frustration. “To cow us into submission while you use us for your own agenda?”

She took a deep breath through her nose, trying to draw calm into herself. “As I said, Master Dawnstar, I have been nothing but transparent in my intentions-”

“To kill the goddamn Emperor?” Colonel Hervoz snarled, the bruises fading from her face leaving it a colourful tapestry in the meantime. “And using my father as some kind of cover story, like you give a shit about the lives of civilians-”

“My actions have always been ultimately about the safety of the civilians of the galaxy,” Tahrin said, raising her voice to be heard over the rabble. “If I choose not to involve you all in the minutiae of my decision making, that is my prerogative as the sole source of funding for this endeavour.”

“And how exactly does arranging for a violent coup of an enemy state and attempting an assassination against the leader of said state constitute the protection of civilians?” Lana asked, her jaw tight and her face pale. Out of everyone present, Tahrin had thought that the former Minister for Intelligence might be one of the few to understand her position, but Beniko had surprised her with her terse disapproval. “At the very least, it should have been a matter to be discussed with the rest of the Alliance council- not conducted in secret to the extent that our own people were locked out of networks they helped to build!”

“I did not know you had become a proponent for democracy, Beniko,” she said.

Lana’s eyes glittered. “Just because I am disinclined to trust the opinions of the uneducated rabble on matters of state does not mean that I am immediately enthusiastic about a blind dictatorship.”

She wanted to rub her eyes wearily. “This is not a government,” she said, “nor is it a state. It is an organization, and as with all organizations, there is an ultimate authority and it is _me_.”

“Your ultimate authority has lost us Arcann and Senya, has violently destabilised Zakuul’s hold on the galaxy and allowed the Republic and the Sith to run unchecked- not to mention the various splinter governments trying to break away or take advantage of the lack of oversight to commit unthinkable atrocities-”

“I am not responsible for the atrocities others commit.”

“What purpose does it even serve, to force an ally as influential as Senya to flee in the first place?” Master Xo asked. “Not to mention, making an attempt on the life and throne of the Emperor has only resulted in his far more volatile sister seizing power-”

“ _Enough_ ,” Tahrin said, her temper slipping ever so slightly as the word escaped on a snarl; the room fell silent and she rose to her feet, hands planted firmly on the table. She took a deep breath, trying desperately to retain her grasp on a state of calm- it had been a very long time since she had lost her temper, and she had no desire to repeat the experience. “Our purpose is- and always has been- to destroy Vitiate and whatever power he might draw upon to influence the galaxy. That includes Nox, and that includes his children, and if I thought for one moment that killing Nox would put an end to our troubles, she would already be dead.”

The silence in the room was cold, agonizingly cold. She did not hesitate.

“I am not here to bring about some idyllic era of peace and cooperation,” she continued, and despite her best efforts, her voice slipped slightly. The room got colder. “I am not here to lead you all into a grand and golden future- this Alliance exists to end the threat that my father poses permanently. Nothing more.”

She straightened, and the newly pink scar across her back screamed in protest; she ignored it. “I will do _whatever_ it takes to kill Vitiate,” she said.

And when the room erupted into arguments yet again, a barrage of shrill voices berating her for a thousand imagined slights, she turned and walked out.

* * *

Arcann cried.

It was somewhat inevitable, really, with the tumultuous memories that Revan had forced upon him, dragging all of the ugly, painful feelings into the light so that he had to confront them. His guilt and shame at the attack on Thexan, or from the relief he felt at not having suffered as greatly as Vaylin. The miserable anger he felt at being left behind, and having to acknowledge he was not as strong as either of his siblings. The gibbering terror of knowing that his most agonizing efforts- even sacrificing his bond with his brother- was not enough to kill his father and remove that horror from ever threatening him again. It was a cacophony inside of him, a seething maelstrom of hate and self-loathing and loneliness, and Revan’s prodding was just too much to bear.

So he wept, just as he had as a small boy, when the Scions had declared his destiny in secret to Valkorion, and sealed his wretched fate. He cried and mourned the brother he had lost, the brother he could never bring himself to face ever again, because the sheer magnitude of his guilt was too overwhelming to consider. He sobbed and grieved the sister he had never had a chance to know in the first place, taken from them too young and returned to them too late. He wept for his mother, for the family that had never been, for the life they could have lived.

And maybe it was selfish, but he cried for himself. For the little boy who had always known he was no one’s favourite, for the son who had craved the love a father would never provide. He cried for the flickering hints of the man he could have been, the man he saw in his brother’s messages- happy and healthy and committed to bettering the world around him. Gods, what was he instead? A broken, bitter tyrant, mourned by absolutely no one, an uncomfortable footnote in history that the galaxy is eager to move on from. A desperate, hysterical dictator, who did far more harm in his brief time in the world than he could ever undo in a thousand lifetimes.

Maybe death had given him a new perspective- or maybe he always knew, deep down in the darkest parts of him, that his lonely road could only end in one destination. What was the point of living, when all he had to look forward to was a lifetime of humiliation and desperate attempts at reparation that could never amount to anything against the weight of his crimes?

“Do you truly want to die?”

Everything ached from the storm of his weeping, and he blearily raised the arm that covered his face; Vivaane sat opposite him, her legs crossed and a fist resting against her cheek as she stared at him quizzically. He had no idea how long it had been, because time seemed to be a rather nebulous concept in this neverwhere, but he felt like he had run a marathon three times over. She met his gaze without fear, and he tried to cobble together enough strength to answer her.

“I don’t know how to live, after this,” he rasped, wincing at the pain in his throat.

She shrugged. “So you learn,” she said. “That’s the point of living, to learn and grow and be more than you were yesterday.”

It stung, and as he scrubbed awkwardly at his face, trying to wipe away the worst of the mess, he said “And what would a ghost know of living?”

She actually laughed, bowing her head as if she was shy. “You do not know my story as well as I thought you might, then,” she said. “Out of anyone in the galaxy, I truly doubt you will find someone better equipped to deal with your sordid and terrible confessions than this silly ghost.”

It was the first time she had made any sort of disparaging comment about herself and seemed to mean it, but he had no idea whether to acknowledge it or not. He didn’t feel precisely like she wanted his pity, but... but what was the point, he couldn’t even comfort his own sister when she struggled. He wasn’t going to say something to a stranger. “I know enough,” he said instead. “The Jedi who abandoned the apathetic ways of the Order to go to war, who fell to the Dark Side, who was brainwashed to come back to the Light, who-”

“To think that my life and my achievements might be summarised so briefly in a series of dot points,” she said ruefully. She huffed a quiet laugh under her breath, her gaze distant. “In between all those grand and terrible moments of infamy, I was merely a young woman, grappling with the immensity of my ego, of the power at my fingertips, of the slavering adoration of the public, and the cataclysmic death toll in my wake.”

She glanced up at him, her gaze cutting through him like steel. “I’m sure you might find that relatable, hmm?”

His stomach twisted, and he looked away quickly. “I don’t know,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say.

She made that same small laughing sound again, and he felt his cheeks burn, as if she was laughing at him. “When my memories returned to me, after... after what Bastila and the rest of the Jedi had done to me faded, and I had a full grasp of who I was and what I had done, I was...”

She didn’t continue, and eventually he steeled himself to look at her, secretly relieved to find she was not looking at him in return. Instead she seemed lost in thought, as if her mind journeyed through memories a thousand lifetimes away from here; she seemed to realise she had trailed off, and shook herself. “I was a far better Sith than I was a Jedi,” she said, a touch of pride in her voice, “but that does not make me heartless. To suddenly have the deaths of millions thrust upon your conscience, to know without a shred of doubt that you are utterly to blame when moments ago you didn’t even recall being present- I will not lie. The guilt and the shame, it was overwhelming. There was a time there where I wanted to die rather than try to deal with the disparate parts of my past and personality.”

He winced as he pushed himself up from where he lay, his body aching as he awkwardly tried to settle into a sitting position opposite her. He sniffed, wiping at his face. “I just don’t know where to start,” he admitted. He wasn’t even sure why he said it- and it wasn’t like it mattered anyway. He was already dead, this was clearly not a realm of the living. Whatever mad hallucination this was that he was trapped in, it was not a place that people came back from.

Gods, it only now occurred to him, he was so desperate for company and someone who could understand him that he’d conjured up the legendary Darth Revan. How very pathetic on his part.

She poked his knee. “That’s your father talking,” she said. “You need to let go of his voice.”

Arcann blinked.

“If you’re going to live, there’s a whole lot of shit you need to confront and hold yourself accountable for, and letting your father’s voice dictate your self worth isn’t going to make this any easier.”

“I- that’s not, I mean, you can’t just assume-”

Vivaane rolled her eyes. “Calling yourself pathetic, or useless, or cowardly- those are all his words. They’re weapons, intended to maim and to inflict as much pain as possible. Those are not words you should measure yourself by.”

A tiny kernel of warmth flickered to life in his chest. “I- thank you, I think-”

“You should instead be prepared to be judged by your choices, by the lives you took either through action or inaction, the planets you destroyed and the cultures you annihilated.”

The flicker was promptly snuffed out, and it left a sour taste in his mouth.

She giggled. “You look like you just tried to bite into a gala berry,” she said.

He scowled at her. “Forgive me if I don’t find it amusing to be mocked and judged by a senile ghost who didn’t exactly face any consequences for her own war crimes.”

Something twitched in her face, a flash of something dark in her eyes, and her smile once again seemed too sharp and too hungry. “No consequences?” she said lightly, rising to her feet like the ghost he had accused her of being. “I’ll show you no consequences.”

The white space around them lurched violently into colour, as if they were hurtling through some kind of inverse hyperspace, and his stomach twisted with it; the colours surged over Vivaane’s skin like water, like her shape was liquid and undefined, and despite not moving at all he could _feel_ the speed at which they were travelling, which only unsettled him further. The scene around them exploded, and the colours scattered to paint a vista of violence and warfare set against the inky backdrop of space. Hundreds- if not thousands-, of ships were locked in battle above a planet of blue and green and red, explosions and laser fire settling alight the sky while ships and shuttles soared and careened in all directions, some crashing slowly with the inevitable tug of gravity upon their wrecks, others turning into catastrophic debris fields that devoured the smaller crafts chasing one another around the capital ships.

For a moment, instinct demanded that he panic, his throat seizing up with the threat of suffocation; but they continued to soar through the sky unhindered, and he realised with no small degree of trepidation that the vacuum of space did not appear to be affecting him.

“This is the Battle of Malachor Five,” she said, her words carrying to him easily despite their speed and the absence of air to bring the sound to him. “I’m sure you already knew that, since you know so much about the lack of consequences I faced.”

“What are we doing?” he shouted, as a ship imploded and sent a wave of heat surging over his skin.

“There is a battle on the surface of the planet, and a battle in orbit,” she continued, as they surged right into the midst of the battling naval fleets. “And in the midst of this all, amongst all this death and destruction, do you know what happened next?”

No matter how he struggled or fought, he could not change their trajectory, or tear himself away from Vivaane’s side; they soared straight at the side of a vast capital ship, their speed never wavering, and he couldn’t help but flinch in preparation for impact that never came. They flashed through the interior like ghosts, silent and sinister as walls and shields proved no obstacle for them in this bizarre reimagining, and finally came to a thundering halt on what he assumed to be the bridge. It was a seething riot of activity, with alarms blaring and shouts coming from all sides as soldiers in Republic uniforms rushed between stations to stabilise their shields under the endless bombardment of the Neo-Mandalorians.

In the centre of the bridge stood a woman, alone, her hands clasped behind her back as she surveyed the battlefield through the forward port. Vivaane went to her instantly, and Arcann was bound to follow. “General Besayla Amariha,” she said, a note of grief and longing in her voice that was perhaps the most honest display of emotion she’d shown him so far. “My dear Bes- I’m sure you’re familiar with this part of the story, your Majesty?”

General Amariha was a young woman, far too young for the weight of the stories and crimes piled upon her shoulders; her dark skin looked almost grey in the light of the bridge, as if she was terribly ill, and the tightly coiled ringlets framing her face seemed almost lank as she turned slightly. For a moment, Arcann could have sworn she was looking at Vivaane, the moment stretching out between the two women, before a man he had previously looked straight through stepped closer, the movement drawing his gaze. He was a Zabrak, a crown of horns atop his head and a small device held before him.

Besayla nodded wordlessly to him, and then the world began to come apart.

The activated Mass Shadow Generator tore Malachor V apart, just as history stated, but now Arcann had a front row seat to that atrocity. The screams on the bridge alone were enough to haunt his dreams for the rest of his life, but he watched as the two fleets struggled to pull away from the gaping Force Wound, ships crumbling in the sky as they were dragged past the event horizon by the weight of the manufactured gravitational pull. It was a nightmare a thousand times more violent than his tutors could ever have described, and if he could have screamed in that moment, he would have.

“I was not present when the Mass Shadow Generator was activated,” Vivaane said calmly, as if they were not witnessing the horrifying mutilation of an entire planet, the murders of tens of thousands of people. “I was over there.” She gestured to another large ship, a jaggedly beautiful battlecruiser in the Neo-Mandalorian style. “Alek and I had led a boarding party, to destroy Mandalore once and for all, and Bes had my explicit instruction about when it was to be used.”

The ship warped and groaned, the metal screaming in protest from the strain of the weapon and the artificial gravity well now yawning hungrily before them. He could feel the engines straining, as ship after ship around them imploded, the occupants crushed in the pressurised metal shells; some of them managed to hold orbit, while others went plummeting down towards the planet as it broke apart and reformed again and again.

“Why are you showing me this?” he screamed.

Vivaane looked at him finally, and her eyes were hollow. Infinite. Monstrous. “I ordered the construction of the weapon,” she said, “and I planned the battle where we were to use it against Mandalore. I sent those in my ranks who doubted me to the surface, knowing full well that they would be dead by day’s end- but I did not physically give the order to fire, nor did I press the button myself. Does this make me innocent, do you think?”

Before them, General Amariha’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she fell to the deck hard. The Zabrak man, that had to be Bao-Dur, he was yelling frantic commands to the team of engineers working beside him, and no one had time to see to the General’s wellbeing. “No, I do not think that makes you innocent!” he roared, ready to shake her. “Tyth’s flaming balls, why would you think anything could excuse this?”

The scene changed so abruptly that he staggered and fell to one knee, his heart pounding in his ears so loudly that it was a wonder she didn’t comment on it. Gasping to get his racing pulse under control, he looked around wild-eyed, taking in the pale cream cobblestones beneath his knee and the pleasant sandstone buildings surrounding them, draped with coloured flags and decorated with mosaics and hanging plants.

He could hear the sounds of civilization, although he couldn’t see anyone, and Vivaane stood before him in the street, her hands clasped almost demurely before her as she surveyed him with cold eyes.

“In that case, your Majesty,” she said pleasantly, “let’s discuss Bothawui.”

A shadow fell over her, as if a cloud had passed before the sun, and he glanced up.

Overhead, the Zakuulan Star Fortress began to open.

* * *

The shrieking of a small child was never a welcome sound, but after days of hellish screaming interspersed with bouts of sulky sobbing and blessed snatched moments of sleep, Thexan was at his wits end. “Anya, my little dragon,” he said hoarsely, his eyes scratchy and red from lack of sleep, “please, you are upsetting your sister.”

Anya was unmoved by his plea, lying as she was face down on the couch with a cushion over her head as she screamed, kicking her legs wildly every time Thexan tried to pick her up.

He wiped his eyes, aware he was crying, but he didn’t really have the time or the energy to deal with it right now. “Anya,” he said, pulling the cushion out of her grasp.

She retaliated by rolling onto her back, her face flushed almost purple as she scrunched her expression up further and continued to shriek, her cheeks sticky from tears and snot and saliva; gods help them all, she was going to have a headache again soon, and that would just make things worse yet again.

“ _Anya_.”

“I want Uncle Arcann!” she screamed, her words slurring badly.

He really did want to cry. “Little dragon, he’s not here,” he said wearily. “We’ve explained this-”

“You went to get him!”

“He had to go away-”

“ _I want Uncle Arcann!_ ”

Movement out of the corner of his eye drew his attention, and he looked over to see Ona’la standing in the doorway, her features haggard as she held a whimpering Jaelin to her shoulder. “Did you want to swap?” she asked, her voice scarcely above a ragged whisper.

Anya’s wail could probably be classified as a war crime, the hypersonic squeal making both of her parents wince; Jaelin pressed at her nubby ear cones and wailed softly in response, clearly just as miserable at her sister’s ongoing dramatics.

He shook his head. “Get her out of here, try and get some rest,” he said. Ona’la detoured past him, reaching out to touch his shoulder in a gesture of shared strength and comfort; he turned his head slightly, enough to brush his lips over her fingers. She smiled, and even that was enough to give him a little more fortitude. The door closed behind him as he turned back to Anya, who was arching off of the couch, only her feet and the top of her head still on the cushions as she screeched. “Anya,” he said, “you’ve got to stop that, sweetheart-”

“My tummy hurts!” she screamed shrilly, pressing her hands to her belly. “Why is Uncle Arcann’s tummy hurt?”

For the first time, he paused, the initial flare of concern at her new ailment stilling. “What do you mean, Uncle Arcann’s tummy hurts?” he asked carefully.

“It _hurts!_ I feel it! It hurts, I want Uncle Arcann!”

Thexan put a hand on his own stomach, on the scar hidden beneath the fabric; Tahrin had not given them a blow-by-blow of her encounter with Arcann, but they were all well aware that his brother had been close to death’s door when Senya had fled with him. It was not the first time that Anya had expressed some kind of tenuous connection to her uncle, but... to be able to feel his injuries?

He reached out carefully, hoping this wouldn’t result in another bite or scratch, and smoothed his hand over her belly. She whimpered miserably and flopped back down onto the couch, weeping inconsolably but at a far more tolerable volume; he breathed out a shaky sigh of relief, choosing his words with care. “Does it help to rub the dragon’s tummy?’ he asked quietly.

Anya bit her lip and shook her head.

“Would a warm bath help? Or a cuddle?”

Sniffing, Anya climbed up onto her knees, tears streaming down her face as she lifted her arms up towards him; he happily obliged, scooping her up into his arms and letting her burrow against him. He felt the shoulder of his shirt grow damp almost instantly from her tears, but he ignored it. “There we go,” he said, smoothing a hand down her back. “It’s all okay.”

She whimpered. “I want Uncle Arcann,” she slurred, clearly having reached the limit of her energy for this particular round of tantrums.

Thexan sighed. “I do too, sweetheart,” he said. “I do too.”

* * *

Arcann scrabbled backwards, tripping over himself and falling onto his hip as he stared upwards, panic gripping him by the throat as the Star Fortress began to emit a deep rumble, audible even on the surface. “ _Vivaane_ ,” he said, his voice high pitched with the beginnings of hysteria. A glow began to form in the centre of the spherical port in the centre of the station, energy crackling off of it as it grew in size rapidly.

Around them, people began to pour out of their homes and businesses, the furry Bothans whimpering and growling as it grew evident what was happening. No one seemed to notice the two of them in the middle of the street, and Arcann almost wished they could see him, but he couldn’t say why. The city was beautiful, and the people were well dressed and well groomed, but as the growing roar of the Star Fortress’ megalaser began to reach a pitch so as to be painful, there was nothing but panic and chaos around them, the air full of screaming as an entire people realised they were about to be extinguished without a thought.

“You did not push the button yourself,” Vivaane said calmly, almost too calmly, “nor did you give the order to fire.”

“Stop it!” he shouted.

“You ordered the mass production of the Star Fortresses as a means of solidifying your rule,” she continued, and a Bothan actually went running straight through her, her form flickering for a moment before settling, “and you gave permission for the renegade Scions to be hunted down at any cost, which includes the small party that tried to claim refuge on Bothawui.”

There was a flash of light, as the Star Fortress fired.

“Are you innocent of the millions of deaths that took place here?” she asked, and then the world was engulfed in fire.

Despite his knowledge that the illusion could not hurt him, Arcann still put his arms up to shield himself, bowing his head against the massive blast of heat and debris as the laser impacted the heart of downtown Drev’starn. The world was nothing but noise and heat, and he found himself bellowing as he fought to keep himself from being blown away in the initial blast.

And then, as quickly as it had begun, Arcann fell gasping onto his hands and knees, back in the nothingness of the white space, with not even a trace of dust on his clothing to indicate he’d been anywhere near an explosion. His heart was hammering in his ears, and the adrenalin was making his hands shake; he sat back slowly on his calves, shivering as he wrapped his arms around himself.

Vivaane stood over him still, that cool expression on her face as she assessed him. “Your father was an evil, evil creature,” she said, surprising him with the apparent turn face in the conversation, “and what you endured under his care is something that no one should ever have to survive.”

He frowned, trying to get his breath back. “Thank you-”

“But what happened on Bothawui, and on Denon, and on Mandalore, and on countless other planets in the last five years,” she continued, her voice growing impossibly cold, “all of that is entirely on you.”

His first instinct was to argue with her, to snarl at her that she couldn’t possibly understand the weight of the throne and his leadership, that she had no right to judge him, but... she’d said it earlier. She was probably the only person in recent galactic history who had any sort of experience that mirrored his, and even if she was just a conjuration of his conscience to try and rationalise his sins...

He bowed his head. “I know,” he said instead.

She was silent for a long time, as if weighing the legitimacy of his humility. He kept his head down and his eyes closed, because after bearing witness to two vast atrocities of human cruelty, he was feeling rather fragile. It did not help at all to know that one of them was his doing, the shame burning at him hot and sour until his skin felt too tight and his eyes burned with the desperation to let the tears escape. His stomach roiled with the taste of it, and he wanted to vomit.

He heard her breath out slowly, a sound of contemplation. “You have been cruel,” she began, “and you have been violent. She have been greedy, and you have been ruthless. You have overseen the deaths of millions. You have destroyed the lives of billions-”

“I _know_ ,” he said from between gritted teeth.

“There are a great number of people who would argue that your crimes place you beyond the path of redemption,” she said. “People who would say that you deserve nothing but suffering and death as recompense.”

He opened his eyes, staring at the white space between his knees. “They... would not be wrong,” he rasped. If anyone mourned him, anyone at all, it would be nothing short of a miracle.

“There are also people who believe that death is essentially a reward for you,” she said, and he could sense her pacing slowly back and forth before him; he still didn’t want to look up, though. “That, in dying, you avoid all responsibility for your crimes, avoid all repercussions, and those that you wronged are denied any sense of justice.”

“Also understandable.”

There was movement out of the corner of his eye, and it drew his gaze instinctively; Vivaane had bent down, her hair hanging over her shoulder as she all but hung upside down beside him, peering into his face. He did his best not to flinch. “What do _you_ think you deserve?” she asked, poking him firmly in the chest.

He didn’t hesitate. “Death,” he said immediately.

“Why?”

“Because, I-” He struggled to find the right words. “You _literally_ just showed me the massacre of the Bothan people-”

“And if you lived, you would have the opportunity to help them recover. You would be able to provide aid, finances, physically walk the broken streets and listen to the survivors. You would be able to learn from it.”

“I’m sure that will be a _great_ comfort to the dead,” he said sarcastically.

“What, and dying in a far corner of space without acknowledging the suffering you have caused, that will be so much more of a comfort for them?” she said archly. “I’m sorry to tell you, but it’s actually quite difficult to get into the Bothan afterlife if you aren’t a Bothan. There’s rules about these things.”

He spluttered incredulously “I’m not actually going to go looking for their ghosts to say sorry to the dead ones!”

“Ah,” she said knowingly, stepping back. He sat up straight, following her movement as she flicked her hair back over her shoulder. “So you want to avoid responsibility.”

Arcann felt his cheeks heating. “I didn’t say that!” he said, but she shook her head.

“You think of death as justice for your victims, but really it’s a way to avoid confronting the extent of what you’ve done,” she said, crossing her arms authoritatively. “In death, your mistakes become everyone else’s problem to correct. Your messes are left to others to deal with. You go on your merry way, your soul free of obligation-”

“That’s not it at all!”

“Then what _is_ it?”

“I don’t want to do this anymore!” he shouted, rising up on his knees. “I’m- I’m _tired_ , and I’m frightened, and I’m ashamed and humiliated, and I’ve spent my entire life looking over my shoulder waiting for my father to kill me. I barely sleep, I barely eat, I can’t remember what it is to live without being in immense pain, and if I go back, I- I... I have to go through all of that again, but I have to put on some damnably altruistic front and spend the rest of my life letting people spit in my face for the pain I have inflicted on them, as some sort of attempt at cosmic balance! I’m _done!_ ”

Instantly, he was kneeling somewhere painfully recognisable, and he ground his teeth together in frustration as he looked around at the plaza before the palace at home. There was some kind of festival going on, with lanterns and fireworks and music playing for the crowds, but as he climbed to his feet, he frowned slowly. There were aliens throughout the crowd, which was not unusual in the later days of his reign, but certainly wasn’t a familiar sight for the most part- yet there were entire families laughing and dancing, mingling with the human Zakuulans as if the xenophobic isolationism of his father’s rule had never existed.

He looked around, and found Vivaane sitting on a nearby bench, eating what seemed to be the fat kernels of the pappocas treat he’d eaten as a child. She waved to him, and gestured at the festival crowd around them. “This is the life you could have lived,” she called, her voice carrying easily over the noise. “This is the Zakuul that almost was.”

“What are you-”

“Uncle Arcann!”

He jerked around, eyes going wide as he saw a small blue twi’lek sprinting towards him; his heart lurched into his throat, an unfamiliar sensation rippling through him. He started to kneel, to catch her if she launched herself at him, but she ran straight through him as if he wasn’t there. Instead, he heard an uncomfortably familiar laugh come from behind him, and he followed her trajectory in time to see her launch into-

His own arms.

He watched dumbfounded as the little girl jumped joyfully into the arms of another version of himself, unscarred and unbroken, clad in white and gold with a silver circlet sitting around his brow. “Oh no!” came his own voice, laughing broadly as the little girl hugged him tightly. “I’m under attack from a ferocious Zakuulan dragon!”

“Rarr!”

Arcann watched with some kind of growing lump in his throat as the other version of himself laughed. “And where is your papa dragon on this fine evening, hmm?”

There was movement beside him, and Vivaane appeared at his side. “There is a Zakuul where you and Thexan were never separated,” she said quietly, “where Vaylin was never broken by your father’s abuse, and where Zakuul was a proud member of the galactic community.”

The little girl squirmed around in his other arms, and he couldn’t stop the sob that escaped from him when she planted a kiss on the Other Arcann’s cheek. “Aunt Vaylin and I were playing hidey!” she whispered conspiratorially.

“Is that so?”

Arcann turned away, pressing a hand to his face. “Why are you so determined to torment me?” he managed to force out, feeling the tears burn at his eyes.

“This Other Arcann is a healer, a doctor renowned throughout the galaxy for his kindness and his patience-”

“ _I’m not him!_ ” he said desperately, half shouting the words in an attempt to make her understand.

Vivaane, however, was unmoved. “But you _could_ be,” she said pointedly. “All you have to do is have the courage to keep on living.”

‘But I-”

“You are faced with a choice, your Majesty,” she said, letting the scene around them fade from view until it was just the two of them again, alone in the vast neverwhere of the white space. “You can remain selfish, and choose the easier path of death, or you can embrace your selfishness and choose life, in the hope you can prove worthy of the love your family has invested in you.”

She held out her hand.

“So, Arcann,” she said, “are you ready to earn your atonement?”

* * *

“Oh, oh,” Mako said, laughing into her hand, “and then, when he tried it _again_ , Dia goes-”

“I’m sure the incident does not bear repeating,” Dia said, calmly sipping from her own glass. She waved the waiter away when she swung past the table again, setting her drink down on the table. “And it was not the grand extravagance that Miss Mako seems determined to suggest it was.”

“Oh stars, Dia, come on! When he came back with the kloo, and he tried to pretend he was the musician on Moon Room’s new album? How can you not find that funny?”

“Easily,” Dia said dryly.

Kol bit back a laugh, pulling her holocomm from her pocket as it buzzed silently; she’d been expecting to go straight back to Rishi after leaving Odessen, but she couldn’t say she was disappointed at being back on Nar Shaddaa. She felt more revitalised than she had in months, and being able to laugh with old friends made her feel a little bit more in control of herself again. “I’ll just take this,” she said, rising to her feet.

“Oh! When you get back, I just have to tell you about this girl I met!” Mako pressed her hands to her cheeks, as if she was struggling not to explode. “She’s a _Mando!_ ”

“So, what, you’ve already planned your wedding?” Kol asked teasingly over her shoulder. She shook her head as she stepped out of the cafe and onto the pathway of the Upper Promenade, clicking on the holocomm. “This is Doctor Torr.”

The connection of the call was fuzzy, and it took a moment for the image to stabilise. When it did, she gasped and immediately turned her back to the public walkway, keeping the call hidden against the wall.

“Hello, Doctor Torr,” Senya Tirall said, looking exhausted to the point of breaking.

“Senya, what- where _are_ you?” she hissed under her breath. “The whole galaxy is looking for you-”

“We don’t have time for that,” Senya said.

“How did you even get this number?”

Senya took a deep breath, almost shuddering from the effort. “Doctor Torr, I need you to save my son.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for non-explicit descriptions of injuries, including infection.

The troop transport rocked from side to side as another blast landed close to their path; Kol’aya gritted her teeth, gripping tight to the safety restraint as she kept her eyes tightly closed and tried to ignore the sickening lurch in her stomach. From up near the driver’s cabin, someone whooped excitedly, and a couple of others laughed, as if being narrowly missed by heavy ordnance was something enjoyable. She could barely hear anything over the rumble of the engines, and the bone-rattling thud of each step the massive walker took, and that was before she took into account the thunderous clamour outside, where Voss and Gormak clashed with Skytroopers clashed with Mandalorians clashed with Vorantikus clashed with Alliance soldiers clashed with Zakuulan knights. It was a violent, unholy mess, and it was somehow louder than the catastrophic destruction of Asylum- and that had taken place on a platform made of _metal_.

She knew if she were to lean out through the back hatch, the sky would be a hazy gold not too dissimilar to her skin, and the heavens would be consumed in a riotous dance between the Eternal Fleet and the ramshackle excuse for a fleet that the Alliance had assembled, mixed through with the equally hodge-podge collection of ships flown by the Mandalorians. An unending cascade of laser fire, enough to trigger a seizure in the unwary, and the occasional pillars of burning fire, directed earthwards like the judgement of a vengeful god, scouring the land down to the bedrock.

She’d never been on the frontlines before, not during Zakuul’s initial galactic takeover, not during the renewed hostilities between the Empire and the Republic after the Cold War, and not even during the Great Galactic War. The closest she’d ever been to an actual warzone was the Battle of Asylum, and prior to that? She was a child of occupation, a child of colonial violence- that had been far and away enough for her.

Frankly, she could have done without the introduction.

“Gets the blood pumping, don’t it, doc?” came a shout near to her head.

She grimaced as she turned to face the speaker, a Mandalorian fellow whose name she had already forgotten. “I can’t say I’m a fan,” she said back, not even sure whether he could hear her over the noise. It was bad enough at times to make the ends of her lekku curl up in a wince, bad enough that her discomfort at the noise was warring with her claustrophobia at being stuck in this metal tub.

He rapped his gauntleted fist against his metal breastplate, the sharp crack of metal on metal echoing in the cabin. “Nothing like the roar of battle to make you feel alive, ey?” he shouted, and several others mirrored him, laughing and hooting as something loud crunched against the hull of the transport. “Oya!”

A body dropped heavily into the seat beside her, apparently unconcerned with the violent rocking back and forth of the transport and uninterested in the safety harnesses; Ysaine smiled broadly at her when she glared at her, only her mouth and the jut of her chin visible beneath the darkened visor and spiked helm that was her trademark armour. “Where’s the smile, eh, Torr?” she drawled, long legs sprawled out in the seat as if she was perfectly comfortable with the sickening motion.

Kol kept her grip firmly on the harness. “I thought you were a pacifist,” she said.

Ysaine threw her head back and laughed, a jovial roar to match the sounds of battle outside. “I can shoot a fucker in the kneecap, ain’t no moral quandaries about that,” she said. “I ain’t gonna kill for sport or revenge, but a squad of clankers is fair game.”

The inside of the walker was almost suffocatingly hot, enough that Kol could feel her clothing grow damp from sweat; it was disgusting, and not at all like the heat and humidity of Rishi. She couldn’t even pretend to understand how the Mandos coped, with the several extra kilos of armour they wore. Instead she just closed her eyes and tried to convince herself she was doing the right thing. “How much farther?” she asked.

“Couple of klicks,” Izzy said. “Fightin’s bad through these parts, used to be a Gormak settlement at the other end of the valley, and the Zaks sent in a crew to raze the whole thing-”

“Goddess.”

“Alliance got a gang down there quick smart, but we’ll see if Aygo’s boys can stand the test of going up beside the clans- ain’t that right?” A rousing cheer met her words, and Kol wanted to bang her head on the wall. Goddess save her from gungho Mandos and their cheerful lust for violence. “Word on the ground is the Zaks have blown up part of the ridge, buried the road to that temple place in rubble, so we’ll have to make the last leg on foot.”

“Delightful,” Kol said from between gritted teeth. She didn’t want to ask how they were going to get an allegedly comatose human back over a landslide buried valley.

She’d been on Voss, the better part of a decade earlier, when she’d been running with Izzy’s crew for a time. Back when things had been a hell of a lot less complicated, even if they had been on the run from the Republic. Now? Now she was in a Mando transport, rushing to save an exiled tyrant from his own stupidity, while the Empire and the Republic ostensibly worked to cover her retreat, even if they weren’t necessarily aware of it.

Things had escalated quickly after her holocall with Senya a week earlier- despite Mako’s best attempts to encrypt and secure the channel, something had flagged them, and Kol’s slim hopes of a quiet extraction and an uneventful surgery had gone out the window. She wasn’t exactly thrilled about having to go and fetch her patient herself- and from an active war zone at that- but what choice did she have? Senya had begged her for help, and something in her exhausted, tearful pleas had tugged at her, the desperation of a mother for her child that her own mother had never seemed to extend to her.

But the call had caught the attention of the Alliance, who must have had their slicers on high alert to find any trace of the missing Emperor- and the shuttle had been tracked by the Eternal Empire, a grievous oversight that Senya obviously hadn’t considered when she’d fled from the flagship a week earlier. She couldn’t go to the Alliance, when Senya was terrified they’d finish the job the Wrath had started and execute Arcann properly, but she couldn’t take on two armies just to get to them. She needed help.

And who better to help out on the battlefield than the clans of Mandalore, desperate for a good fight after the massacre on the fields of their home, ready and willing to cause a distraction big enough and bloody enough to give her time to sneak in and out?

There was another jarring shudder as something landed far too close to the walker, and the whole compartment tilted violently forward, as if the front of the transport had suddenly dropped into a hole. She squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could, her lekku wrapping around the harness subconsciously as the other passengers all yelled and hooted excitedly. Beside her, Ysaine climbed almost effortlessly to her feet, holding on one handed as if balance came as easily to her as breathing. “Think we’ve reached the end of the line, lads,” she yelled, and a chorus of excited whoops echoed back and forth in the confined space. “Let’s get out there and give our pretty friend here a nice wide path of clanker parts to walk on.”

“Today is a good day for someone else to die!” someone bellowed, and the cheers were almost nauseatingly loud.

She felt someone tugging on her arm, and looked up to see Ysaine grinning as she stood over her. “This is our stop,” she said cheerfully, as the rest of the Mandos poured from the hatch at the back of the walker. There was the acrid tang of blaster fire in the air, the smell of tibanna gas not properly vented from improperly modified weapons. The golden sky was a smouldering burnt orange, as the smoke from the fires muddied the atmosphere, and the laser fire from the warring ships lit it up from within like hellish bursts of lightning.

Kol hid the bubble of terror she was feeling by scowling at her. “Do you have to be so sickeningly excited at the prospect of getting shot at?” she said, her fingers shaking as she fumbled to unhook herself from the harness.

Ysaine shrugged, bending down to pick up the strap on her portable medpack for her. “Gotta admit, there’s a certain... thrill to it all,” she said, and her grin broadened. “Shereshoy, that’s what Shae always says.”

The mention of Izzy’s wife soured her mood further, and she reached over and took the bag from her without further commentary; she slung it over her shoulder before checking that her blaster was still strapped firmly to her hip. Ysaine was already moving to the hatch, her silhouette framed against the burnt golden sky for a moment that was worthy of a portrait, and for that brief moment Kol froze, her heart in her throat all over again.

But the moment passed, and Ysaine jumped down from the walker, and Kol gritted her teeth to climb up the angled floor and follow her out. The air outside was cool- not enough to be nippy, certainly not as cold as Odessen was wont to be- and the press of it against her clammy skin was a blessed relief; she took a shuddering breath, as if suddenly the weight of the metal box was dragging down on her anew. It made the battlefield not quite as terrifying in comparison, dealing with one’s own demons.

The walker had indeed gone tumbling into a freshly made crater, the front of the transport caked in dirt and clay from where the bomb had inevitably detonated right in front of them; one of the legs was damaged, the foot plate half buried in the smoking earth a few metres away, sparks hissing from the exposed wires. Nobody seemed to have been injured, but the warriors had scattered outwards like children set loose in a playground, sprinting in every direction to chase down a suitable enemy.

“Try and keep your head down as you run,” Izzy shouted, a hand on her arm to guide her around the back of the walker. “We’ve got a squad of clankers up on the next hill, don’t give ‘em an easy target.”

“I can’t believe the Alliance thinks you’re helping,” Kol shouted back.

Izzy grinned roguishly. “Who says we ain’t helping?” she said, straightening briefly to her full height and lifting her blaster, sending a stream of laser fire up towards the ridge with unerring accuracy. “They want dead Zaks and clankers, we give ‘em dead Zaks and clankers. Their fault for not specifying we weren’t allowed to run two jobs at once.”

She could taste the bitter metallic smoke in the air, enough to make her put an arm up to her mouth to try and block out the worst of it. “You’re gonna be in so much trouble when Tahrin finds out-”

“If. If Tahrin finds out.” Ysaine fired a few more shots with a confidence that Kol couldn’t ever imagine possessing, and then she was tapping her on the back. “C’mon, we’ve got an opening. Let’s move!”

She kept her head low as instructed, and they made a run for the treeline at the base of the cliff. Her blood was pounding in her lekku, throbbing so hard she was sure to have a migraine later, and the bitter metal taste on her tongue made her double check to make sure she hadn’t bitten the inside of her cheek amidst all the stress.

What the fuck was she even doing? Going under the noses of the most powerful, terrifying people in the entire galaxy, people who could move stars with the power of their minds and their fury, all to rescue a stupid, petty human man who really probably deserved what had come to him? Oh, but no one would ever forget her name if she succeeded here- her achievements would live on through the ages in infamy, the surgeon who outwitted Dark Lords and Jedi and Empresses alike, the doctor who saved the son of a god.

Was it ego that drew her here, running for her life while the ground around her was cut up with blaster fire? Or was it the memory of a scared little girl, desperate for someone- anyone- to care enough to save her, to see her, and her inability to turn away from anyone in the same situation?

_Not the same_ , she reminded herself as they wove through the trees, her lungs burning as she ran. _He’s not the same as me._

Senya’s haunted expression swam in her mind anew. _“Please save my son.”_

She gritted her teeth, and kept running.

* * *

Tahrin surveyed both battlefields from the bridge of the Doombringer, their remaining orbital satellites focussed directly over Voss-Ka and the Pilgrim’s Path and projected onto the monitors before her. Through the viewport ahead of her, the grid-like pattern of the Eternal Fleet was arrayed like a net, slowly advancing towards them and closing around them; most satisfyingly, perhaps, was the fact that they had not openly engaged with the Alliance fleet, far too leery of the power of the Gravestone and the Doombringer combined. Instead, their fighters and their bombers ducked and weaved between the larger ships, nipping and picking away at one another like gnats upon a larger beast, while the jagged teeth of the Zakuulan boarding pods tried to find purchase upon the hull of her ships and Master Dawnstar’s Aegis sought to breach the shielding over the enemy hangar bays.

Mixed in amongst the Alliance ships were Mandalorian vessels, and if she found the lack of coherent style to be distasteful amongst the Alliance ships, adding in the riotous rust and clamour of the Mandalorian fleet was downright offensive to the eyes.

It was frankly a mess. The chaotic nature of the encounter, so violent and so costly in both lives and infrastructure, was exactly what she’d sought to avoid by confronting Arcann in secret last week. This aggrandized farce served no purpose but to allow the Alliance and Zakuul to bare their teeth at one another in some pointlessly machismo display, and the Voss and Gormak paid the price of their vanity.

“Eternal Fleet maintaining position at two thousand kilometres,” called the First Officer, and Tahrin glanced up, making eye contact with Moff Pyron. She nodded ever so slightly, and he bowed his head briefly in acknowledgement.

“Hold position,” Pyron said in response, hands clasped behind his back as he strolled back and forth before the observation windows on the bridge. “Maintain shield integrity and continue Silencer power cycle.”

“Acknowledged, sir.”

Tahrin nodded to herself as she looked back to her screens, taking in the damage being sustained on the surface with a bleak weariness. Just because she had been raised to be a killer did not mean that she was heartless; certainly she understood that from a tactical standpoint, it behooved her to intervene on Voss on behalf of the locals. If the Alliance to destroy Vitiate was to maintain any sort of momentum in the galaxy, they needed to maintain support- or, at the very least, indifference that would allow them to move about without hindrance or hostility from local governments. She couldn’t allow Vaylin and her fleets to ravage Voss out of some misplaced sense of vengeance at her family.

Although, if she was entirely honest with herself, Tahrin was not completely certain that Vaylin’s attack on Voss was about Arcann, or even Senya. The young woman was volatile, certainly, but she wasn’t a fool- in fact, Tahrin found Vaylin to be a far more intelligent and worrisome opponent than Arcann, and while a vengeance fuelled tantrum was not necessarily out of character for her, to destroy an entire planet and culture in order to kill her remaining family? That was not something Tahrin felt to be true to who she was.

Her sister.

She breathed out sharply, ruthlessly quashing the flicker of emotion that sprang to life in her gut. She did not have time for sentimentality.

“Transmission from the surface, my Lord,” Pyron said.

“Put it through,” Tahrin said, and a moment later two hazy blue figures appeared before her; Theron and Torian both looked a little worse for wear, even over holo, with a rather impressive gash on Torian’s cheek and a rip in Theron’s shirt that was discoloured with either oil or blood. “Status update,” she said.

Theron winced. “Hello to you too,” he said, his voice a little hoarse.

She narrowed her eyes. “I apologise for putting the protection of Voss and her people above your need for social inanities, Shan- shall we talk about the weather? The economy?”

He snorted. “Alright, alright, Madam Grumpypants-”

“I understand that you are enamoured of- what is it? Fantasy Huttball. Perhaps we can discuss your ideal team dynamic-”

“We have evacuated the remaining citizens to the Tower of Prophecy,” he said loudly, clearly embarrassed as he talked over her. “With the warning we had from Master Adhi and Sana-Rae, we got most of the Voss out of the city and down to Gorma-Koss, and the fighting hasn’t been as thick down there.”

Torian was nodding. “Added bonus that them Gormak like to burrow in deep, all those mountain tunnels work a treat for hiding from orbital bombardments. Much easier to guard one tunnel entrance than a whole city, too.”

“Casualties?”

“Uh, inevitable,” Theron said, rubbing at the back of his neck and wincing again when the motion apparently pulled on the wound on his ribs. “Hard to say at this point, fighting’s real thick in the streets, and the market quarter took a direct hit from an orbital. We had people down there, don’t know yet if they’ve made it.”

Tahrin pursed her lips in consideration. “Have we heard from either of the strike teams?” she asked.

There was a loud explosion from somewhere off screen, and both Theron and Torian jerked in alarm and reached for their weapons before relaxing cautiously. “Master Beniko’s team made it to Gehn’s Overlook a few hours ago,” Torian said after a moment, wiping sweat from his brow. It left a streak of blood across his skin. “We lost contact with them shortly after they entered the Nightmare Lands proper.”

At this news, Tahrin glanced at Theron, curious to see if the team’s silence was a distraction for him at all. Shan’s current paramour, the Sith Lord Maurevar Thane, was accompanying Beniko due to his familiarity with the planet and the threat posed by the Dark Heart; Thane had, in his youth, served as an apprentice to both Darth Malgus and Darth Severin, and his tenure with the latter had led to a period of service on Voss. The Nightmare Lands certainly did not pose the same level of threat they once had before the destruction of Sel-Makor, but three millennia of maddening corruption was not going to dissipate in a mere decade. It was a terribly dangerous mission even without a planetary invasion in progress, and she would be lying if she said she wasn’t interested in Shan’s reaction.

But his expression betrayed nothing, ever the closed off spy facade, and she made a note to watch him more closely over the coming hours. “Keep trying to raise them,” she said. “If they encounter Senya and Arcann in the Dark Heart, they will need our support.”

_Or Vaylin_ , she thought silently to herself. While they had not yet had any word as to whether the self appointed Empress was with the Fleet, or whether she commanded them from her throne on Zakuul, Tahrin could not discount the possibility that Vaylin was here too. The Voss had healing rituals that Senya might have sought out for Arcann, yes- but Voss was also a place where Vitiate had spent a number of years, trapped in endless struggle with the creature Sel-Makor. She had met him here, not her first meeting with him, but certainly her first meeting with him in her official capacity as the Wrath, and she remembered how even under barrage from a violently powerful creature, he had literally seethed with power.

The fact that Senya had brought Arcann here, to a place where Vitiate had maintained a body and a presence? Highly suspicious. The possibility that Vaylin too might be here, either in pursuit of her family or in search of that lingering power?

It was a risk she couldn’t take.

“Master Xo’s team are on their way to the Shrine of Healing,” Theron interjected, drawing her out of her musings, “but the fighting is thickest in that region, even with the Mando support. They took a shuttle out of the city, but they were shot out of the air.”

“Any casualties?”

“Couple of scrapes and bruises, nothing major.”

She nodded. “Hold the city as long as is feasible, but do not needlessly risk the lives of our troops or allies. If things grow more urgent, contact us for extraction- the Gravestone can provide cover if it should come to that.”

She disconnected, uninterested in whatever sarcastic goodbye Shan might have attempted to use, and turned her attention back to where Pyron was issuing instructions to the deck crew. She could see one of the other destroyers in the battlegroup listing badly, their shields apparently having failed under the constant barrage of the Eternal Fleet’s boarding parties and remote fighters.

She took a deep breath. She couldn’t needlessly sacrifice her people- but she couldn’t risk the possibility that this was all another step in Vitiate’s slow and circuitous plans to regain his strength.

“Maintain fleet positions,” she called, and Pyron turned to face her, “and prepare to fire the Silencer.”

* * *

Felix glanced upwards instinctively at the thundering rumble that rocked the temple complex, wincing as a shower of dust rained down from the ancient bricks and got into his eyes. He rubbed at his face with the back of his gloved hand, keeping his blaster rifle balanced carefully in the other arm; beside him, Tharan had a hand up to his mouth, as if he was anxiously chewing on his fingernail while lost in thought, and Felix sighed and reached across to tug on his sleeve. It startled Cedrax, who evidently had been unaware he was chomping on his own damn nail, and he laughed nervously at having been caught out.

“Don’t go chewing your fingers off before the fight starts,” Felix chided gently, only half joking. “Gonna need them to fire your gun.”

Tharan made a show of adjusting his hair- and Felix noticed there was sweat on his brow- as if his biggest concern right now was simply his appearance, and not the vast Zakuulan army slowly descending on their location. “Now now, Felix dear, you know I’m a pacifist,” he said, his voice shaking ever so slightly.

Felix snorted. “Well, for science things then,” he said. “I don’t think your girl Holiday would be thrilled to see you come back to the lab without all your digits.”

“My word, Iresso, I never took you for such crude imagery.”

“I wasn’t talking about-” He shook his head, chuckling under his breath. “At least you’re still making jokes,” he said, glancing at him sideways. Tharan looked pale, and his smile was a little strained, but he wasn’t running screaming for the hills.

The hall was relatively quiet, as if even in a crisis, the Voss couldn’t bring themselves to make a fuss; there was a couple of dozen of them all seated on the stone floor, speaking in hushed conversations as if the sounds of cannons and booming explosions weren’t rattling the foundations of the ancient temple. Even the handful of children seated about with their wildly coloured eyes weren’t too upset, none of the usual crying or yelling that he’d seen before in tense situations like this. There was a team of Voss Commandos prowling about, like caged vorn tigers, and he was grateful to have them here to fight alongside- things didn’t feel quite so hopeless with a full military squad to aid in the fight.

And they had another couple of cards up their sleeves- three cards, to be precise. They had Holiday, an artificial intelligence whose prowess far outmatched the primitive Skytroopers and who could easily go toe-to-toe with the GEMINI units directing the Eternal Fleet. While the Voss and Gormak had their own technologies to fall back on for planetary defenses, Holiday’s support for the shields made them nigh on impenetrable. They had Grandmaster Shan, who was standing beside the door with the leader of the Commandos, speaking in quiet tones while they both held their weapons at the ready.

And they had Asmi.

His gaze drifted unerringly back to his wife, who was propped up against a nearby wall with her eyes closed, a blanket over her lap. He couldn’t tell at this distance, but he was almost certain she was shivering, and Ru was crouched beside her with a solemnly distressed look on his face as he patted a damp cloth against her cheeks. Even as he watched, he saw Asmi smile wearily and turn her head ever so slightly, just enough so that she could make eye contact with their son; she raised a hand up to his face, fingers tracing his cheek as they spoke quietly, and while he had no chance of hearing them from this distance he knew without a doubt that Asmi would be comforting Ru, that she would be praising his courage and his strength, and that even in her moment of pain and exhaustion she was taking the time to comfort and uplift the people around her.

Damn, but he loved her so much.

Asmi had erected a shield of her own over the temple and grounds, nowhere near as large as the one she’d maintained for years that had prevented Zakuul from finding Tython and the hidden Jedi, but still formidable enough. It didn’t help at all that this one was being actively tested over and over again, in the form of both physical and psychic attacks. It broke his damn heart to see her deteriorating so quickly, after months and months of slow, agonising recovery, but he knew he couldn’t ask her not to do it anymore than he could sprout a set of montrals himself.

There were a pair of the Mystics kneeling beside her, their heads bowed and their hands clasped together formally, and he hoped to whatever god was listening that they were sharing their strength with her.

Something she said made Ru giggle, his face scrunching up as he laughed, and Felix’s heart soared to watch the two of them. The damn Zak Empress herself could come down here, and she wouldn’t stand a chance against him if she tried to hurt his family.

Another rumble shuddered through the temple, rattling the foundations, and a beep sounded from the digitized wrist band that Cedrax wore on his arm; Felix glanced over as Tharan raised it to eye level, and the bright pink holographic figure of a woman appeared projected before them. “Holiday, my dearest,” he began, but she interrupted him.

“Oh, Tharan, my love,” she said, wringing her hands together anxiously, “there are people here, they’ve made it to the Shrine.”

Felix straightened, his hand instantly checking the safety on his blaster. “Friendlies?” he asked, leaning in to the call. On the edge of his peripheral vision, he could see several Commandos watching them closely.

Holiday looked terribly distracted, her hair slightly askew and dark circles under her eyes; he never understood why she adopted these more human affectations, but it seemed to make her happy, so he left it at that. “I- I don’t know, they have weapons,” she said. “I think they were fighting the Skytroopers? I don’t know...”

“You’ve done marvellously, my dear,” Tharan said fondly, and Holiday beamed at the praise. “Promise me that you’ll stay safe, yes?”

“But Tharan, we have to protect those we love at all costs- my dear Asmi would do no less, and neither can I!” The defiance with which she said it made Felix smile, even as he ducked his head to hide it from Tharan.

“My dear-”

The sound of a lightsaber activating echoed through the hall, and they both jerked around to see Grandmaster Satele advancing on the door with the Commando leader at her side. Patting Cedrax awkwardly on the shoulder, Felix rose to his feet and jogged over to them, nodding silently to Satele as he held his rifle at the ready. From the other side of the door, he could hear voices, and while they didn’t sound hostile in their discussions, it certainly sounded tense. The Commando leader, a imposingly tall gentleman by the name of Keran-Ro, lifted a hand to his ear as he listened to the information being relayed by his team on the far side of the wall.

After a moment, he looked up again, making eye contact with the Grandmaster. “They are Mandalorian,” he said, his mechanically lyrical voice still unnerving after years of living amongst his people.

“The Alliance, then,” Satele said, lowering her lightsaber ever so slightly.

But Keran-Ro was shaking his head. “There are only two,” he said. “I do not think the Alliance would send only two to our aid.”

“Then what are they doing here?”

“They are asking for the Zakuulan Emperor.”

A ripple of unease passed through the hall, and behind him, Felix could hear whispers fanning outwards as the news was passed back. Before he could stop himself, he blurted out “Well then, let’s hand him over.”

Satele turned to him with a closed expression on her face. “It is not the way of the Republic or the Jedi to turn over injured parties to those who would do them harm,” she said.

“Begging your pardon Master Jedi, but that’s bullshit- we’re endangering the lives of all the Voss and Gormak on this damn planet right now by keeping him down here-”

“Lieutenant,” Satele chided gently, and he snapped his mouth shut in frustration.

Keran-Ro was still listening to the earpiece, nodding silently. “One of them claims to be a doctor,” he said. “They have come to remove him from Voss, in the hopes it will put an end to the invasion. They state that they mean no harm.”

Satele nodded in return. “I will speak with them,” she said. “Open the door.”

“Grandmaster,” Felix tried, as she deactivated her lightsaber and returned it to her hip.

She, in turn, glanced over at him, putting her hand on his shoulder briefly. “I will not let any harm come to your family,” she said quietly. She looked back to Keran-Ro. “Open the door.”

* * *

Kol desperately wanted to wipe the sweat from her brow, but she didn’t dare move while the Commandos held their weapons at the ready, unblinking as they stood between her and the door. She hadn’t particularly enjoyed her time on Voss the first time around, deeply unnerved by the spiritualism that controlled every aspect of the Voss people’s lives and by the number of subterranean halls she’d been forced to travel through, and so far her second visit wasn’t really elevating her opinion of the planet. More tunnels, more mysticism, and this time she was being actively shot at.

If she was a more enthusiastic follower of the Goddess, she’d have believed she was being tested.

Beside her, Izzy stood tall and unintimidated by the Commandos, shoulders thrown back and her hand comfortably settled on the holster of her blaster; she was grinning, more teeth than smile, and Kol wished she could have even half of her confidence. The odds were arrayed against them, six commandos to one Mandalorian and a doctor, but Izzy was looking at them like she knew she was going to chew them up and spit out their bones.

The silence was grating on her nerves badly, and she found herself speaking without really thinking. “Look, if he’s not here, you can just tell us and we’ll go- it’s just his mother told us she was bringing him here, so we just-”

A gauntleted hand settled gently on her shoulder. “Easy, hon,” Izzy said calmly, the sharp smile never wavering. “It’s all good.”

“I didn’t fly into an active warzone just to be turned away at the door by a couple of-”

“Torr.” The word was sharp, a command. “Let’s maintain a sense of courtesy towards our hosts, eh?”

Kol looked away, gritting her teeth in frustration. Her body was aching from the last half hour of jogging across the jagged, uneven landscape towards the temple, dodging patrols and trying to outrun those that spotted them, climbing through the rocky gulleys and the thickets for the most cover possible. She felt filthy, desperately in need of a shower, and her calves were killing her- thank god she made running a priority in her leisure time, or else she would’ve been an inconsolable jelly blob on the floor right now. The Shrine of Healing- which she had thankfully avoided visiting last time she was on Voss- was a massive stone edifice, seemingly carved from the mountain itself, the outside walls like gargantuan monoliths carefully slotted together to form the vaguely ziggurat shaped structure, and even before they’d entered it, she’d been able to feel the weight of it pressing down on her. The halls trailed deeper and deeper into the earth, into the mountain, and despite the wide corridors and arching ceilings, it felt more and more suffocating the further down they went, like Ryloth but a thousand times worse for the alien, unfriendly feel to it all, and the thundering booming of the orbital bombardments shaking the stones around her and threatening to crush her.

And now she wasn’t even sure if Arcann was here, the dumb fuck- or if he was, she was going to be denied entry, so she’d have come all this way only for him to die anyway.

To say she was stressed was probably an understatement right now.

Another explosion rocked the temple, and a shower of grit and dust rained down on her; she felt her throat seize up in a panic, and she squeezed her eyes closed, forcing herself to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth. It was hard, _goddess_ was it hard- it felt like there were iron bands around her chest, stopping her from breathing in properly.

There was a crunching, rolling sound, and she whimpered without meaning to, but when she opened her eyes it wasn’t to the sight of the roof caving in on her. Instead, the strangely glowing door ahead of them was unfurling in segments, like the petals of a flower, all the more bizarre for the fact that they were made of stone. The rumbling noise came from the pieces grating together as they slid out of sight, opening the hallway into a vast chamber with a soaring roof, more of that pale green light spilling over the assembled crowd within.

In the centre of the portal, blocking their way forward, stood a very familiar figure- not that Kol’aya had ever met her in person, but you’d be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t recognise the all but immortal Jedi Grandmaster.

Beside her, Ysaine bowed respectfully. “Satele,” she said, with the familiarity of someone well acquainted with the other woman.

Kol blinked.

Satele, by comparison, pursed her lips, not quite a smile but not unfriendly. “Madam Pierce,” she said, more formally. She wasn’t exactly what Kol was expecting for such a famous and powerful figure, with her greying hair and her nondescript grey robes. “Or, as my sources would have me believe, Clan Leader Pierce?”

Ysaine snorted. “You Jedi, always so damn formal and shit,” she said.

“And you, Pierce, are as charming as always,” she said. Her golden eyes came to rest on Kol, who did her best not to shiver. “I understand you have designs on an individual who has taken sanctuary within this Shrine.”

Kol swallowed. “Ma’am, we know Arcann is here,” she started to say, but Satele held a hand up to interrupt her.

“I do not deny that the Emperor is here, but this is a place of healing and safety,” she said, “and this invasion is an act of violence and imperialism the likes of which we have not seen in decades. If your intentions are the same, then I will not let you proceed.”

She said it so calmly, so matter of fact, and Kol’aya didn’t doubt for a moment that Satele absolutely meant to stop them by whatever means necessary.

Ysaine, however, seemed unimpressed. “Yeah, yeah, you’re big and scary and super powerful in the Force, amen,” she said, crossing her arms. “We ain’t the sort to run several klicks across a battlefield on foot just for the joy of shooting someone in the face.”

Satele’s lips twitched, as if she was fighting off a smile. “I’d like to ensure that we all make our positions clear from the outset,” she said diplomatically. “Are you with the Alliance?”

Kol spoke before she could help herself. “Not willingly.”

Both women glanced at her, Ysaine with a pained expression beneath her helmet, and Satele with a far more piercing look, inquisitive even. With an aggrieved sigh, Ysaine replied “Technically, yes. Mandalore was formally asked to assist with the defense of Voss, and the Clans responded- and there will be a rescue team coming through in the next few hours, looking for his Imperial Idiocy.”

Satele’s eyebrows lifted ever so slightly. “I assume this future rescue team is unaware of your presence here,” she said carefully.

“That would be correct,” Ysaine said.

The Grandmaster looked back to Kol, her eyes piercing through her, as if she could look down straight to her soul. “Then who do you represent, if you are here to remove the Emperor before they arrive?”

She could’ve been a smartass, she could’ve been a braggart, she could’ve done any number of things to let this woman know that her opinion in the matter was irrelevant, and that Kol was going to see to her patient whether she liked it or not. She was sick and tired of having to explain herself to people who thought they were more powerful than her, who thought that their strength allowed to the tout themselves as some kind of moral compass, fit to judge lesser mortals. She was well and truly sick of the god-complex of every Force user she encountered, whether it was benevolent or not.

But she also couldn’t forgive herself for putting her pride above the needs of the sick and the injured, for elevating herself above the innocent Voss who were cowering in an underground vault while those same gods and immortals used their home as a dejarik board. If she could save lives with her humility?

She bowed her head towards the Grandmaster. “I represent his family,” she said quietly. “More specifically, his mother.”

She might have imagined the softening of Satele’s features at those words, desperately hoping for some sort of connection with a woman so alien to her... but she also might not have imagined it. Regardless, Satele surveyed her for a moment longer, as if searching her soul for malicious intent, and finally she sighed.

“I would be nothing but a hypocrite if I did not give you this chance to try,” she said, a sense of resignation in her voice. “Stars know, I’ve stayed my hand against men far worse than Arcann- I even believed, for the briefest of moments, that the Light was powerful enough to heal the hatred in his father, so it would be beyond cruel for me to deny his son the same opportunity.”

Behind her, a soldier with a tattooed face looked as if he was about to speak, frustration written all over his features; as if sensing his irritation, Satele held up a hand for silence, glancing back to him. “Be at peace, Lieutenant Iresso,” she said. “See to your wife’s comfort first. We are not in danger from these individuals.”

He looked as if he wanted to argue the point, his dark eyes rife with suspicion and unease, but he nodded his head; his finger did not stray too far from the trigger of his rifle, however.

An explosion sounded extremely close by, and the lights within flickered violently as larger pieces of stone rained down upon them; the occupants of the hall gasped and murmured, the tension spiking violently as the rumbles took longer than normal to taper away.

“That can’t be good,” Ysaine said bluntly.

Satele sought out Kol’aya’s gaze, her own expression grim. “If you are to get him out of here before the others arrive, we’d best go now,” she said, stepping aside and leaving clear the portal to the hallway beyond. “If you’ll follow me, doctor?”

Kol’aya took a deep breath, trying to ignore the dozens of eyes upon her as they marched quickly towards a far door.

Everyone here was going to die if she fucked up here today.

Even if she did everything right, they still might die- and all for a man who really didn’t deserve it.

What the fuck was she even doing here?

* * *

Kallathe stared moodily out of the window, thoroughly annoyed by the pastoral landscape of Odessen and determined more than normal to hate it. The sun was shining but the temperature was mild, the pale blue sky dotted with almost benevolently fluffy clouds, and from the couch beside the window she could see the distant fields being tilled by the twi’lek settlers the Jedi had dragged along with them, and it was all so sickeningly mundane and peaceful that she just about wanted to scream.

_You were made for more than this_ , Valkorion murmured beside her. _You are a creature of passion, of violence- it is why you were always so well suited to Dromund Kaas, and it is why you will be suited to Zakuul._

She ignored him, batting a hand at the air beside her shoulder as if swatting at a mosquito.

“Oh, is there a bug in here?” Kallathe turned at the mild distress in Bejah’s voice, a sigh already sitting on her lips; Bejah was sitting on the couch opposite, a damp cloth in her hand as she seemed to be in the process of cleaning up Lelei’s face. They were all three of them sitting in the sunlit lounge of the small apartment that Bejah and her family called home on Odessen, the somewhat dreary rockface enlivened by all the personable touches that were so distinctly Bejah, and called to mind their more youthful days aboard the Fury. There were colourful cushions scattered about with no regard for a colour scheme or balance, there were cheerful lamps that seemed to have been cobbled together from scrap and glass shards, and there were of course any number of small droids and automatons buzzing about, with a round flat one zooming about on the floor for some unknown purpose, and a small swarm of three butterfly-like creations spiralling about near the window. “I can ask Nikos to bring the spray in.”

Kallathe swallowed back the sigh, very much aware of little Lelei’s wide eyes upon her. “It’s fine,” she managed to force out. “I’m quite certain there’s no need to bother dear Nikki.”

Bejah’s eyes lit up, and Kallathe counted that as another point to her. “Oh, don’t you let him hear you calling him that,” she said, smiling as she finished up with Lelei and set the cloth down on the table. The little girl promptly tried to reach for the half chewed piece of cake that Bejah had taken from her earlier, scooping up a tiny handful of the buttercream icing and smooshing it up near her face and missing her mouth almost entirely. Bejah sighed fondly. “You do know that no one is allowed to call him Nikki.”

“I’m a little more significant than no one,” she said with a smirk, winking ever so slightly at Lelei, who giggled delightedly in response.

_This moronic mundanity is beneath you in so many ways, it insults us both._

Kallathe abruptly changed her posture on the couch, trying to ignore the way she almost slapped herself in the forehead in an attempt to shut Valkorion up. She rubbed the offending hand over her hair instead, as if she had intended to groom herself all along. “Where is dear Nikki, anyway?” she asked, reaching for the the cup of spiced tea that had been otherwise going cold on the table. It was something to do with her hands. “Don’t tell me you’ve domesticated him entirely and he’s off doing laundry or baking more of these cakes.”

Bejah laughed, ruefully accepting that she’d lost the battle against Lelei and the buttercream as she sat back against the couch. “Nikos is a far better cook than me,” she admitted sheepishly. “It’s one of the few things I haven’t really been able to get a handle on, but I built some droids for the laundry and chores and what not- I brought some of them with us, but I didn’t really think everyone on the base would appreciate all of my, um, friends.”

_This snivelling wretch is no more Sith than the worms in the soil- this is why I abandoned my first Empire, and forged a new and better kingdom. She simpers and cowers, full of hesitation and fear, and-_

“ _Shut up_ ,” Kallathe snarled, her fingers digging in hard to her knee. He did not continue, and it took her a moment to realise the room had fallen silent; when she glanced across the small table, her heart lurched to see the distressed look on Bejah’s face, and the mirror image of it on her daughter’s tiny face.

_See? Laid low by a mere insult. Pathetic._

Kallathe sighed aggressively, breathing out slowly as she tried to rein in her temper; she rubbed wearily at her forehead, frustrated beyond belief at the smug sense of mockery that bled over from him. “Not you, dear one,” she said stiltedly.

There was a beat of silence, and then- “Ohh,” Bejah said, understanding in her tone. When Kallathe glanced up at her, her eyes were wide. “Does it, I mean- does he, ah... always?”

She gritted her teeth. “Always,” she said.

Bejah leaned forward, her arms resting on her knees. “Is it- is it like what Kaltix had?” she asked carefully. “Or Khem Val, is it sometimes, ah, do you lose-”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” she said sharply.

“Oh,” Bejah said. “Um, okay.”

_Such a tepid, simpering creature. They insult you by keeping you here with such bland minions for company, when you should be on Voss to finish off my pathetic son and stake your claim to the throne._

Kallathe closed her eyes, desperately willing him to stop. “It’s alright, Bejah,” she said, her voice strained. Stars, but she was so tired, so so tired of his bullshit.

_You would not be so tired if you did not fight me at every turn- I am not your enemy, my dear. I desire nothing more than to see you take your rightful place as ruler of the galaxy, an empress unparalleled in our history. Do you not see the insult they do you, caging you here while they go off in pursuit of battle and glory on Voss? Do you not rage at the way they imperil you lover, throwing her against the shields of your enemies in a pointless display of bravado?_

She put her head in her hands.

_They will kill her, because my daughter is an unstoppable tsunami that will rush over all of your friends and allies, leaving all of them bloodied and broken while you sit forgotten and unprotected in your gilded cage-_

A pair of gentle arms wrapped around her, and the cushion beside her sank down as Bejah moved to join her, enveloping her in a tight hug as she pulled her against her chest. “It’s alright Kal,” she said softly, rubbing her shoulder in calming circles. “It’s alright. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

_Oh, but I can._

“We’re going to take care of you, alright?” Bejah said, kissing the top of her head. “What chance does he stand against the Apprentices Three, hmm?”

Kallathe laughed despite herself, chuckling at the memories the name evoked. “That was the most ridiculous name,” she said.

“Zash always was the most ridiculous,” she conceded. “But she got something right in keeping the three of us together- and we’re still a threesome, despite the years and the distance-”

“Who’s having a threesome?” Nikos came strolling into the room, the usual swagger in his step tempered by the fact that he had a small child sitting on his shoulders. At the sight of Kallathe and Bejah entwined on the couch, he pretended to pull a face. “Never mind, I ain’t interested in bunking up with Red.”

“Always a pleasure to see you too, Nikki,” she said. A small hand was thrust into her field of vision, clutching an oozing handful of buttercream icing that was being generously offered to her; she looked down into Lelei’s ever so serious face, and tried not to cringe as she reached out and held out her hand to accept the gift. Lelei beamed at her and smeared the warm, gooey icing across her palm, and Kallathe closed her eyes and tried not to think about how revolting it was. “Thank you, little one.”

“Aw, Lei-Lei, you ain’t trying to share your chewed up bits with your aunt, are you?”

_This is demeaning._

She was so tired, but she would never be too tired to frustrate the parasite in her brain. “Nonsense, my dear Nikki,” she said, lifting her hand up to eye level, “young Lelei and I are partaking in a face mask.” She dabbed her fingers into the buttercream, and then dotted them gently on Lelei’s face, eliciting delighted giggles from the girl. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand the intricacies of skin care.”

“Oh, no, actually Nikos has probably got more skin products in the refresher than I do,” Bejah said earnestly.

“A man’s gotta make himself damn pretty if he wants to woo a sith witch,” Nikos said, no small trace of smug pride in his voice as he and Casey continued through the room towards the children’s nursery. Lelei went toddling after them a moment later, arms outstretched either to offer her father a hug, or to offer him the dripping goop in her hand.

“Damn pretty!” Casey repeated from the other room, giggling delightedly.

“That’s right, boyo, damn pretty!”

Bejah laughed softly, and Kallathe closed her eyes as she rested against her shoulder, struggling as always with the pain of letting herself be vulnerable; it was different with Bejah than it was with Lana. Bejah had been there almost from the beginning of it all, from their very first day at the Academy. Along with Kaltix, the three of them had been a formidable, unstoppable trio, who had seen each other at their lowest points and helped them to reach their full potential.

_You have only begun to unlock your full potential. These snivelling mortals only make you weaker by association._

_You’re wrong,_ she hissed back, as Bejah absently laced her fingers through hers, _they make me stronger._

* * *

They were halfway down yet another sloping hallway when Master Shan stopped abruptly, so much so that Kol’aya nearly ran into the back of her. She put a hand to the wall, as if she needed it to keep her balance, and her other hand went up to her forehead as if she was suddenly extraordinarily confused. Their Commando escorts noticed they had stopped, and drew to a halt as well, patiently standing to attention without complaint.

Ysaine drew up next to Satele, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Shan?” she asked in concern.

Satele took a moment to compose herself, shaking it off like drops of water. “I’m... alright,” she said carefully, but she didn’t take her hand away from the wall immediately. “Something terrible has taken place in the battle- I sensed a great loss of life-”

She didn’t even get a chance to finish her sentence before a sound like a hundred thunderstorms roared across the land, the sound itself loud enough to rattle the stones around them as they all pressed their hands to their ears. It took a long time to fade away, echoing and rumbling and bouncing between the mountains like the sound of an ice sheet cracking. Finally it was quiet enough for normal speech again, and Satele straightened, although she looked a good deal paler than she had a moment ago. “We should hurry,” she said grimly. “I do not think this to be a turn of events that will benefit us.”

No shit, Kol wanted to say, but she held her tongue. The fleets in the skies above Voss had some of the most terrifying weapons ever seen in the galaxy- fuck, she’d had a first row seat to the Fleet and the Gravestone duking it out against one another- and if that sound had been the onset of open battle between the two fleets? Goddess help them all.

The Commandos led them onward, and the temple began to shake and rattle with more regularity; Kol felt her anxiety rising and rising, and her hands were shaking when she tried to unscrew the lid on her canteen for a sip of water. Ysaine took it from her without a word, loosening the lid before handing it back to her; she didn’t mention the trembling.

Around a corner a door finally came into view, guarded by another pair of Commandos; they held up their hands, either in greeting or in warning, but their guides waved them down, speaking with them in hushed tones in their oddly mechanical voices that Kol couldn’t quite parse from where she stood. The building continued to shake, and the weight of the mountain above her was making it hard to breathe, so she jammed her hands under her arms and pretended she wasn’t about to hyperventilate. Satele joined the Commandos at the door, adding her voice to the discussion, and Kol was just about ready to scream. Did these people not want Arcann off their planet? This invasion was entirely due to his presence! Surely they’d leap at the chance to get rid of him? “Please,” she blurted out, her eyes burning as if the dust was finally irritating them enough for tears, “please, just fetch Senya. She can explain everything-”

“I’m afraid that is not possible,” one of the Commandos said, and they finally opened the door.

Kol’aya rushed through into the chamber beyond, pushing past the Commandos and Satele, with Ysaine following close behind her. There were a number of beds, and several Mystics standing about in their brightly patterned robes, and... and she couldn’t see Senya?

She drew closer to the beds, and the Mystics turned to watch their approach, their solemn faces and shining eyes giving nothing away; she could see Arcann, his clothes burnt and blackened, his face flushed with fever, and-

She slammed to a halt. “What?” she whispered.

Lying on the bed beside Arcann’s, her eyes closed and her skin dangerously pale, was Senya.

She was moving before she even realised it, instinct and a dozen years of training kicking in where fear and exhaustion would have left her paralysed. “What the hell even happened here?” she asked, dropping her satchel beside Arcann’s bed and reaching into it for a packet of antiseptic wipes. She could still smell smoke on him, and his clothing hadn’t been changed since the fight a week earlier; fuck, they called themselves a place of healing? What kind of medics ignored the basic principles of hygiene, fuck! Fucking Force users! “Why is Senya unconscious?”

“The mother grew distressed at the son’s condition,” one of the Mystics said, and she glared over at them as she deftly worked to wipe away the dirt and sweat on Arcann’s face and neck. “When the assault grew in ferocity, she feared he would not survive the war. She gave her strength to him.”

Arcann let out a pained noise, not quite a moan, but he didn’t rise to consciousness as she had hoped. Her medscanner read his temperature to be dangerously high, a cursory analysis showing elevated white blood cells to indicate infection; she reached into her satchel and fumbled around for her stims one-handed, while she tried to pull down the collar of his tunic with the other. “What does that even mean?” she snapped, finding his neck flushed and clammy beneath his shirt. She held up the stim to check the label before pressing the antibiotic against his skin. “Did you perform some kind of transfusion?”

“In a sense.”

She wanted to scream in frustration. Thankfully, Satele and Ysaine were standing over the bed of the other woman, and she could at least trust them to give her a straight answer. “Her vitals are weak, but steady,” Izzy said, running her wrist scanner over her.

“Can you help her?” Kol asked, running a pair of laser scissors up the front of Arcann’s leather armour, slicing it open from navel to neck. His torso was a riot of colourful bruising, the blues and purples beginning to turn a sickening green along the edges, and- _fuck_. His entire left shoulder was red and tight, the skin shiny as if he’d endured a severe burn; in a sense, that was exactly what had happened, as the poorly fitted arm he’d worn had been destroyed and ripped from the socket, the motorised components shorting out and burning him from the inside out. The metal plating was pushed outwards from the infected tissue, his muscles swollen from the stress and the burn and the inevitable infection that was ravaging his body.

Shit. If he’d had a decent arm installed in the first place, the damage wouldn’t have been anywhere near as bad, even if he had lost the artificial limb. If she’d just gone to Zakuul all those years ago, he wouldn’t have been in pain for so long, and he might’ve been more amenable to working with the Alliance if he’d been more clear headed, and people wouldn’t be dead or dying right now, and she-

“Kol!”

She snapped back to herself, her cheeks flushing with shame as she glanced over at Ysaine kneeling beside the other bed. “What?” she snapped back.

“I said, have you got a spare adrenal?” Ysaine said irritably.

Kol scowled at her, but she still reached into her satchel and tossed the stim over to her. She couldn’t afford to distract herself right now, especially not now. Arcann needed her. “Oh, you are not in a good way, bud,” she whispered, trying to prise off the excess plating so that she could try to deal with the worst of the infected tissue. To her immense frustration, they appeared to have been crudely welded into an interlocking shoulder guard, and if the medic responsible for such an atrocity had appeared in front of her just then, she would happily have shot them. “I need to get him out of here,” she called.

Ysaine snorted from the other bed. “Sort of thought that was a given,” she called back.

Kol shook her head, using a subdermal injector to start applying a line of antibiotics throughout his shoulder and his upper torso. “He needs blood, and kolto, or he’s not going to make it,” she said. “He’s got internal bleeding, third degree burns-”

“Never let it be said that Tahrin half-asses a job when it comes to murder,” Izzy said.

“Izzy!”

“Alright, alright.” She stood up and turned to the Mystics. “Y’all got a speeder or anything? Maybe a trained cow we can hitch up to a cart?”

“The shuttlecraft the mother and son arrived in is still in the courtyard beyond. We would be more than grateful if you were to remove it.”

“We can’t use a Zak ship,” Kol said, trying to find a data port on Arcann’s arm socket that hadn’t been melted and warped by the destruction of the arm, and coming up short. She had a portable computer with her in the satchel, but she hadn’t really believed she’d need to use it until now; she ran the cable instead between her medscanner and the lap computer, hoping she’d be able to find a strong enough signal from the chip inside the ruined motor to access Arcann’s cybernetic programs. An injury this severe could very well cause brain damage, and if the program had continued to run ever since the initial injury? She shuddered to think of the pain he’d been enduring as a result. “Vaylin found her with that ship, if we leave in it, they’ll be able to find us straight away.”

“Not if it gets blown up trying to escape from Voss.”

Kol glanced over her shoulder incredulously. “What?”

Ysaine waved a hand absently. “Thinking aloud,” she said, and as if to punctuate her words, an explosion rocked the temple heavily enough that it knocked those on their feet off of them; without thinking, Kol threw herself over Arcann’s unconscious form, shielding the exposed wounds on his chest and shoulder from the debris and grit raining down upon them. When it was safe to sit up again, she was dismayed to see his face covered in a fine layer of dirt, and she cupped his cheek carefully while she wiped it clean once more.

Across the aisle, Ysaine crouched down beside Satele, speaking in hushed tones that didn’t quite carry to where Kol was kneeling; the noise of the battle was almost constant now, a sign that the armies were drawing ever closer to discovering them. Kol knew that they needed to leave urgently, not just for the threat of the encroaching hostiles, but for the sake of Arcann’s health and safety in general; he was breathing shallowly, and there was a faint red tinge around his lips that made her suspect at some point he’d been breathing or swallowing blood. The bruising around his torso could’ve meant broken ribs, and while that was nothing that an overnight in the kolto tank couldn’t fix, it was a lot more life threatening when it had gone untreated for a week or so.

A hand appeared on her shoulder, and she looked up into Ysaine’s face. “Time to go,” she said, gesturing to Arcann. “You want me to carry him?”

Kol stared at her, aghast. “Carry him? He probably has spinal injuries! We can’t risk moving him-”

“Well, since this hospital is a little short on, well... everything I’d consider necessary for the running of a hospital- including hover beds- we kinda have to do things the old fashioned way.” She smiled, but the expression was tight, and Kol could tell she was far more stressed than she was letting on. “C’mon Kol, you gotta trust me.”

Damn her.

Gritting her teeth, she climbed quickly to her feet and stepped to the side, hurrying around to the other side of the bed so that she could adjust Ysaine’s grip as she slowly lifted the unconscious emperor into her arms. Arcann was not a small man, even with the missing weight of his mechanical arm to offset, and she could see the strain as Ysaine slowly straightened; she winced as his head rolled back, rushing forward to try and settle him against her shoulder. “Fuck, he’s chunky,” Izzy said, her voice pained. “Let’s move-”

“Wait!” Kol turned to where Satele sat beside Senya, hesitating. “I- Senya?”

“Can’t carry both,” Ysaine said, already hurrying past her and up to the door on the far wall where the Mystics had indicated the shuttle lay.

“We can’t just leave her,” Kol spluttered, but Satele held up a hand calmly.

“Master Tirall is stable, and will not suffer for being left untreated,” she said quietly. “As Pierce said, the Alliance will arrive shortly, and they will see to her safety. I will protect her until they arrive.”

She hesitated a moment longer, agonised indecision rippling through her.

“Torr!” Izzy bellowed from down the hallway. “We gotta go!”

Praying that the Goddess would forgive her for abandoning a mother in need, Kol’aya turned on her heel and sprinted after Ysaine through the eerie green hallways, catching up to her just as they exited out onto a secluded courtyard that seemed to be built into a natural fissure in the mountain. There was a narrow patch of sky overhead, not quite as thick with smoke as the open fields on the Pilgrim’s Path had been, and as promised, there was a single Zakuulan shuttle sitting in the small yard.

Ysaine strode up the ramp without hesitation, and Kol charged after her, shimmying through the hatch ahead of her to run ahead and see what passed for crew quarters. It was a tiny craft, with only a single bed and no cargo area, and she was dismayed to see the linens on the bed were thick with soot and dirt and dried blood. “I can’t treat him here either,” she said, as Ysaine pushed past her to place him on the bed.

“Won’t have to,” Izzy grunted, hands on the small of her back as she stretched after unloading Arcann’s weight. “Gonna switch shuttles up on Shae’s flagship, then send this wreck out into the fray on autopilot. It’ll get blown to smithereens in seconds, and we’ll be able to report that our poor dear Emperor tried to flee the battlefield and died in the most cowardly fashion imaginable.”

Arcann let out another muted groan, sort of a choked rasp, as if he was struggling to breath, and Kol pulled open the wall panel beside the bed and activated the emergency oxygen mask, hooking it over his head and doing her best to avoid the worst of the inflammed tissue amongst his scars. Behind her, Izzy had dropped into the pilot’s seat and had begun the power cycle, the ship coming to life beneath them.

She wished it was going to be as easy to bring Arcann back to life- just press a button and watch him slowly come back to them. She had a feeling that nothing about this was going to be easy.

She had no way of knowing that healing Arcann was actually going to be the easiest part of the coming months.


	14. Chapter 14

Nar Shaddaa was the place you went when you wanted to feel like you were Somebody, because anybody could be Somebody on Nar Shaddaa- for the right price, of course. Dreams were made and crushed in the smog-stained towers of the overburdened moon, the rusting metal surfaces reflecting the gaudy neon just enough to make it look enticing instead of decrepit, and wasn’t that just the perfect metaphor for the culture of the Smuggler’s Moon? Everyone had a little bit of rust, everyone was a little bit stained from life and the woes that came with it, but shine bright enough and no one would be the wiser.

You wanted to be a pop star? Nar Shaddaa was home to some of the finest recording studios in the galaxy, and the most coveted music awards shows were of course hosted in some of the more upmarket hotels and casino theatres. You wanted to be a business entrepreneur? The Hutts were the driving force of commerce and holo-trade in the galaxy, and even their near bankruptcy after the events of Makeb was little more than a blip on the radar. You wanted to be a sporting champion? There was no greater place for an audience than the arenas and stadiums of the Smuggler’s Moons, with Hutt-ball the most financially lucrative sport to ensnare the galaxy in decades.

Under the smoggy red sky, you could forget about the rest of the galaxy; with the neon rainbows in your eyes, you could indulge any vice you desired and buy any life which you could dream of. As long as you had the money, no sin was forbidden, no crime illegal, and nobody asked questions.

In the Entertainment District, an upper tier sector of the city-moon that boasted skyscapes and the occasional glimpses of bruised sky, such indulgences were common place. It was a place of drugs and dancing, of sex and singing, of murder and money. People had all sorts of ideas about what constituted entertainment, and Nar Shaddaa sought to please all of them.

On a side street off of Nal Bidu Avenue, there was a nightclub that certainly sought to indulge as many delights as was possible in one single location. It was called- somewhat unimaginatively-, The Love Nest, and it was run by a large family of Zeltrons who affectionately referred to themselves as ‘ _the Mob_ ’. The proprietor was the family matriarch, a stout middle aged woman by Zeltronian standards who was nonetheless stunningly beautiful to most humanoid species, who went by the name of Mama Kara and who seemed to delight in the sordid indulgences that took place in her establishment.

It was a loud and raucous venue, full of sensual bass-rich music and darkened alcoves lined with satin cushions and silken sheets. It never really seemed to be closed, because morning and evening didn’t really mean a whole lot on Nar Shaddaa, so it wasn’t at all uncommon to see people lingering in the street outside, or coming and going at all hours.

So it was really the ideal cover for a secret operation that needed to avoid the attention of, well, everyone in the galaxy. Mama Kara was good friends with Doctor Elspeth Cordovich, who for a good many years had run a free medical clinic on the same block as the Love Nest, and Mama always had room in her heart and her nightclub for the assorted odds and ends that the Doctor seemed to collect, sentient or otherwise. Mama Kara had loaned out the upstairs store rooms to Doctor Cordovich when the clinic had struggled with its’ meagre size allowance, and even after the Grand Champion Ysaine Pierce had funded their move to far grander premises, it was well known that the two matriarchs remained good friends.

When Elspeth asked for use of a storeroom for her niece and her friends, no questions asked? Well, this was Nar Shaddaa. This was the place where one went when one didn’t want questions asked.

The occupants of the upstairs storeroom included Elspeth’s niece- that large and rather daunting twi’lek woman, who everyone knew was a sith and who everyone knew better than to call a sith to her face-, that famous twi’lek doctor who everyone adored because everyone had a story to tell about a friend or a family member she’d saved, a couple of Mandalorians, a slicer, and a riileb nurse who seemed to be more fluent in sarcasm than in Basic. It was, for this part of Nar Shaddaa, nothing particularly out of the ordinary.

Oh, there was the small matter of the body they had brought through the service dock on a hover stretcher, covered by a blood stained sheet that had roused no small amount of interest amongst the Mob; but as Mama Kara pointed out, it wasn’t the worst thing they’d seen in their halls. Wasn’t even the strangest thing they’d had that week. Whatever Elspeth’s niece and her folk wanted to do with a body in the privacy of their own room, well, that was none of their business.

And if it all happened to correspond with news coming out from Voss of the catastrophic battle fought between the Eternal Empire and the rebel Alliance, and the rumours of the Zak Emperor being assassinated?

None of their business.

* * *

Dia’ayla met them at the spaceport with a transport luridly emblazoned with the logo for a popular soda, not even blinking in the face of Kol’aya and Ysaine’s curious looks. “I hope you realise what an inconvenience this is,” she said tersely, arms crossed stiffly as the other two women transferred Arcann from the shuttle in the tray of a hover bed. “I loathe driving in Nar Shaddaa traffic.”

“You just hate driving in general, Dee-Dee,” Ysaine said, throwing Kol a cheeky wink over the top of the Emperor’s unconscious form. “It’s the sith in ya, gotta be chauffeured about all fancy like the lord of darkness you are.”

“Goddess help me, I will toss you out a hundred feet above the Promenade, Pierce.”

Ysaine jumped down from the back of the transport, leaving Kol in the rear compartment with Arcann; the doors closed a moment later, leaving them in darkness, and she had to close her eyes to remind herself to breathe, chanting silently to herself that the walls were not closing in on her. She could still hear the conversation going on outside, which helped somewhat, and she could hear the wheezing rattle of Arcann’s laboured breathing beneath the oxygen mask. Things to ground herself with. “Dee-Dee it hurts my feelings when you say things like that,” came Ysaine’s muffled voice as the transport rocked slightly from side to side as they climbed into the driver’s cabin.

“It is an immense labour of love on my part that I do not simply smite you where you stand for your repeated insistence on calling me a sith.”

Even in the crushing darkness of the compartment, Kol smiled to herself, already anticipating Izzy’s next words. “Did you just say you love me, Darth Dee-Dee?”

“Thin ice, Pierce.”

Kol let out an embarrassing squeak when the transport lurched forward, eyes pressed tight shut as the repulsorlifts kicked in and lifted them off the concrete floor of the hangar. She wasn’t normally one to get travel sick, but for the sake of security and Arcann’s safety, someone had to ride in the back with him. In the dark, enclosed container that was definitely not closing in on her and definitely was not a cage-

Focus. She just needed to focus. She was here to do a job, and that job was to ensure that Arcann survived, so she focussed on him. If she concentrated, she could still hear his pained breathing over the hum of the engine, and she latched onto that with all of her being.

The irony of Arcann being the one to help her through a panic attack was not lost on her, but she assuaged the uncomfortable feelings that roused in her by pointing out that it could have been anyone unconscious on the hover trolley beside her, and they still would have helped. The fact that it was him didn’t make it noteworthy or special.

It was agony not being able to see how they were faring with their travels; Nar Shaddaa was rather lax when it came to immigration processing, but they came down hard on customs and cargo. It all came down to money, of course, because the Hutts didn’t care who was coming and going from their capital, but they sure as hell cared if they weren’t getting a slice of the pie. Hence smuggling Arcann out of the spaceport in a drink transport- they’d pay the appropriate bribes at the gates, and go on their way with no one the wiser.

She could hear Izzy and Dia talking, and unsurprisingly, as soon as the radio was switched on in the cabin, it was switched off a moment later. That, at least, made her smile, and it happened a few more times over the coming minutes, with Izzy clearly keen to test Dia’s limits and Dia just as determined to impose them. They kept stopping and starting as they moved down the line towards the customs gate, and Kol did her best to just keep herself occupied in the dark in the meantime; the last thing they all needed was for their cover to be blown so far into this arrangement just because her claustrophobia got the better of her.

There was a clunk as they pulled up to what she assumed had to be the processing booth, the transport rocking slightly as the maglocks held it in place; couldn’t have people making a break for it without offering up their contributions to the great and mighty Hutts, oh no. This was the moment they were most at risk of discovery, and Kol held her breath. All it would take was one overzealous customs officer who decided their bribe wasn’t adequate and wanted to inspect the contents of the transport, either out of greed or out of some perverse sense of duty, and they were done for.

_Goddess, please._

“Chobasa,” came the muffled greeting of the customs officer, and Dia responded with a curt “Achuta.” From there, it was a little too hard for her to make out the particulars of the conversation, so she just held her breath and prayed with everything in her that the goddess was in a good enough mood to humour their disastrous endeavour.

Whether it was luck or divine intervention, they were detained for no more than a minute or so, and Kol almost collapsed with relief when the transport started moving again. She was startled by the buzz of her commlink, and lifted it up from her belt. “Yes?”

“Relax, Torr,” said Ysaine, “I can hear your blood vessels bursting from here.”

She scowled at the metal wall separating her from the cabin. “Not all of us are as comfortable committing crime as you are, Pierce,” she said.

“Well, fuck, and here I thought I was speaking to the Zak’s most wanted.” There was a beat, and then- “I can feel your eyes trying to burn a hole in me.”

“Whatever gave you that idea,” Kol said caustically.

Ysaine snorted. “Anyway, traffic isn’t too bad, so we should reach downtown in about half an hour. Sit tight for now and wail dramatically if Princeling takes a bad turn.”

There was a click as the connection shut off, and then Kol was left sitting in the dark again. Alone.

Arcann didn’t count.

She took a deep breath and started reciting the bones in a human body. When she was done, she started on the major muscles. She was a third of the way through counting off the major blood vessels when she felt the transport finally slowing, her ear cones aching ever so slightly as they dropped altitude from the higher sky lanes to the streets of the district.

A few minutes later again, and the transport glided to a stop, and then turned sharply in reverse. The harsh warning beeps were jarring after the deafening rumble of the dense Nar Shaddaa traffic, and she braced herself against the crate beside her.

They finally- _finally_ \- came to a stop, the engine whining down to silence; from nearby, she could hear pounding music, not so close that she could make out anything more than the bass line, but close enough to make it clear there was a decent party in progress. She tensed when she heard the lock on the door being disengaged, her free hand drifting to her hip where her blaster sat holstered. Just because she hadn’t heard any shouts or fighting didn’t mean that Izzy and Dia hadn’t been secretly taken out during the drive, and that she was actually about to be ambushed by- by... sith assassins or Zakuulan skytroopers or-

The door swung open, revealing a loading dock at the back of a building, the type used for unpacking bulk deliveries from heavy transports. The music was slightly louder with the door open, and seemed to be coming from the open archway in the wall ahead. Standing on the platform itself was Izzy, of course, and Dia was walking up the steps now too, and beside Izzy were two of the most beautiful women that Kol had ever seen.

They were Zeltron, obviously, given that this was a Zeltronian establishment, and they appeared to be identical twins. Their skin was a vibrant, almost neon pink, and their hair was an almost equally vibrant shade of blue; they wore it simply, pulled back in a long tail that fell almost to their lower backs, while their bangs hung heavily over dark, slumberous eyes. Their lips were so perfectly plump and round that she would have suspected them of cosmetic surgery, had they been any other race than Zeltron. Their outfits were the only way of distinguishing them from one another, with one in a figure hugging catsuit of white and neon green, the other in a matching white and neon orange; both had excessive cross sections cut out entirely, exposing large amounts of bright pink skin to the roaming eye. Kol had spent plenty of time around Zeltrons in her years, but even so, it was almost impossible not to stare.

They both tilted their heads to the side in unison, as if to glance past her. “Is this him?” the one in green said, her voice almost enchantingly beautiful.

She blinked, finally remembering Arcann lying unconscious beside her. “What?”

“The Emperor?” said the orange one.

“Lord Arcann?” said her sister.

“He was ever so handsome in his holos,” said the other.

“We’ve heard of his exploits on Zakuul. We wished to ask him which were true-”

“Okay,” said Izzy, stepping into the transport, “that’s quite enough of that from you two minxes.”

Kol had forgotten how potent it could be to be in the presence of a Zeltron, and she shook herself to clear her head. She already felt distracted, and a little flustered, and there was a primal part of her that was absolutely ready to throw down with the pair of them for their interest in Arcann, which made completely no sense at all. “And you both are...?”

Ysaine grunted as she pushed Arcann’s hover bed out of the transport and onto the platform, crouching to activate the controls once it was on the flat duracrete. “Kol, this is Mia and this is Maya,” she said, gesturing absently to the two women in a way that absolutely did not clarify who was who in the slightest. “This is Doctor Kol’aya Torr, and she’s got dibs on His Majesty.”

Kol was halfway out of the transport, and at Ysaine’s words she stumbled, catching her foot on the edge of the platform. One of the twins caught her, Mia or Maya or whatever the fuck their names were, and as Kol straightened with her face flaming, it was even more humiliating to see the Zeltron’s expression hadn’t changed an inch, still faintly curious and slightly hungry. “I haven’t called _dibs_ ,” she spluttered angrily, readjusting her jacket. “He’s my _patient_ , and I promised his mother-”

“If we are quite done with pleasantries,” Dia said coolly, coming up beside them, “then perhaps we can move indoors where there is less chance of discovery and death?”

The twin who hadn’t helped her smirked. “Always a pleasure to see you again, Dia’ayla,” she said, and she gestured for them to follow her inside. Green Mia-or-Maya took the lead, ushering them towards the service door, and Orange Mia-or-Maya brought up the rear, securing it behind them once they were all in off the street. Ysaine pushed Arcann’s hover bed through the hallways, while Kol walked alongside it, running her medscanner over him to ensure he hadn’t taken a turn for the worse during their trip downtown.

Ahead of her, Dia made a disgusted noise. “Must you?” she asked pointedly, and Kol had to glance up to make sure she wasn’t talking to her. Instead, Green Mia-or-Maya was looking coyly over her shoulder, evidently the source of Dia’s ire.

“Dia’ayla, you do know that we are no more able to control our pheromones than you are able to control your body odour. It is simply a genetic reality-”

“There is a psychic component to your racial abilities, and I would appreciate if you would not use it on me,” Dia said coldly.

Green Mia-or-Maya pouted, lips pursed as if she was about to blow a kiss. “It’s not just a switch we can turn off,” she said.

“And we need it for work,” said Orange Mia-or-Maya from the back.

“Which you have interrupted.”

“It won’t make for a productive evening if we have to twist ourselves up tight.”

“Not at all. We need our clients to relax.”

“They come here for our _racial abilities_ , after all.” The last was said almost curtly, the words smug but cutting, and Kol revised her initial assessment of them as vapid pleasure seekers. That didn’t mean that she didn’t find the background lure of the pheromones distracting as all hell- she felt like she hadn’t had an orgasm in _weeks_ , goddess- but she was a little more wary of the twins and their intentions. But Doctor Cordovich vouched for the family, and it was no small thing to house a galactic war criminal just on the goodwill between two old women.

She’d just have to be careful what she said and did around them.

The music was louder here, and there was a stench both familiar and alien; anyone who had spent even five minutes in a bar or a nightclub would be familiar with the smell of overly sweet alcohol and sour beer, the sharp tang of too many bodies in too small a space, and the underlying reek of vomit. It was a somewhat welcome reprieve from the rot and smog of Nar Shaddaa’s atmosphere, but not by much- and it wasn’t exactly ideal as far as healing environments went, but what choice did they have? Arcann was wanted by every government in the galaxy, and she’d seen firsthand on Voss how utterly heartless his sister was willing to be in order to kill him.

And it all circled back around to one thought she could never escape for too long, trying to work out why exactly she was risking so much and setting herself against such colossal odds for a human man who really wasn’t worth even a minute of her time.

She glanced down at his face, as if looking for answers in his expression; as expected, his eyes were closed and the lower half of his face was covered with the oxygen mask, and there was nothing for her that could pass as an answer to the doubts plaguing her.

“Here we are,” said Green Mia-or-Maya, coming to a stop before a door and holding her hand out in a gesture of welcome; Dia didn’t even look at her as she brushed past, but Kol knew she wasn’t imagining the tension in her shoulders.

Kol entered just ahead of the hover bed, letting Ysaine deal with the annoyance of trying to angle it around the doorframe; instead she stopped to take in the room and it’s occupants,a sense of immense relief settling over her as she did so. They had done an excellent job on such short notice, and on a limited budget- there was even a portable kolto tank on the far wall, the sort usually seen in temporary military camps, the contents glowing a soft and comforting blue. There were numerous desks and computer terminals assembled haphazardly around the edges of the room, and at one of these desks Mako sat with her boots up on the counter, clearly halfway through a conversation with the young human man who was sitting cross-legged on the desk beside her.

“- just dunno if I should say anything,” Mako was saying. “It seems a bit, I dunno, forward I guess. Hey Kol.”

The kid on the desk made a snorting sound, probably a laugh. “Uh, she’s Mandalorian- being forward is like, practically a marriage proposal.”

“Thank the stars you’ve arrived,” said a far more droll voice, and Kol turned to where Jekki was standing beside a surgical table, already in full scrubs and with a familiar disdainful expression on his chitinous face. “If I had to hear one more minute of relationship squee, I’d-”

“You’d do nothing, you old beetle,” Ysaine drawled, shoving Arcann’s hover bed the last few feet by itself. “You’re all talk.”

Mako nearly launched herself across the room. “Izzy!” she screeched, catapulting into Ysaine’s open arms.

Ysaine was laughing as she spun her around. “Hey baby girl, how you doing?”

Kol felt a hand on her elbow, and she glanced over her shoulder to find Orange Mia-or-Maya right beside her, her lashes almost impossibly long from this close. “You can send for us whenever you need,” she said, just as she felt another touch on the other arm. Green Mia-or-Maya appeared there, her expression just as sultry as her sister’s. “Mama Kara has asked us to ensure that we attend to your every desire.”

“Um,” Kol said.

“That’s quite enough,” said Dia brusquely, already having shucked her coat and begun the necessary cleaning routine at the single sink in the room. “We will call if we require anything.”

There was a single whispering touch against the curve of her lekku, as if one of the twins had gone to trail her fingers over her skin and thought better of it at the last moment, and then they were gone; with them went the impossibly fraught tension in the room, and the hunger within her eased significantly. Shaking her head to clear the last unwanted cobwebs of desire, she clapped her hands once to draw attention. “If i can interrupt the heartwarming reunions,” she called, “Jekki, are you prepped?”

“Oh, I’m ready darling,” he said flatly, in the most unenthused voice imaginable.

She gestured to Arcann. “Get him stripped and onto the gurney, and do we have access to a spray head?”

“We brought one over from the clinic.”

“He’ll need a full rinse, two parts water to one part kolto-”

“What, we’re not gonna just chuck him in the tank and call it a day?” Ysaine said, following Dia’s lead as she hung up her jacket and threw an oversized scrub shirt on over the top of her singlet before making her way to the sink. “Princeling gotta have a sponge bath and everything?”

“He’s got a fractured skull, he can’t wear the breathing mask while he’s submerged.”

Jekki sighed extravagantly as he effortlessly lifted Arcann from one bed to the other, a look of mild disdain on his face as his antennae twitched. “His blood pressure is dangerously low,” he said.

“Getting to that,” Kol said. She turned to Mako. “Are the scanners operational?”

Mako adopted an overly dramatic hurt expression. “What kind of slicer would I be if I hadn’t immediately made sure the scanners-”

“Alright, alright, keep your shirt on.” She watched as Dia ceded the wash basin to Ysaine, her arms held up in the all too familiar gesture that indicated a readiness for gloves. The young man seemed to recognise his cue, and he scrambled down off the desk and over to Dia; for the first time, Kol realised he was in scrubs too. “Who are you, kid?”

“Oh! Uh, yes, hello ma’am,” he said, fumbling slightly with the gloves as he tried to face her at the same time as he assisted Dia. “I mean, uh, doctor. Sir. No, doctor.”

“The kid’s good for it,” Ysaine said over her shoulder, as she scrubbed furiously at her hands and arms in the small sink.

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “I figured as much, can’t imagine why he’d be here otherwise, but who is he?”

The young man in question tried to interject. “My name is Isaiah, ma’am. Doctor, I mean.”

They were getting nowhere fast. “Mako, get the scanner running, I want a full diagnostic render in two minutes.” She pulled off her own jacket and tossed it over the back of a nearby chair, snatching up a bottle of antiseptic spray from beside the sink and thoroughly dousing her lekku; she passed the bottle to Dia as she continued with her instructions. “Jek, how are you coming along?”

“Oh, I’m fine, just manhandling a naked Emperor, as you do.”

Ysaine turned away from the sink, arms in the air, and Isaiah leapt to assist her as he had Dia. “He’s Clan Cadera, new recruit,” she said, continuing the conversation as if they hadn’t been interrupted at all. “We’ve had him training with Elsie over at the clinic, but we figured he could handle the challenge of something bigger.”

There was a flash of green behind them, and a thin stream of light ran slowly over Arcann’s body; an image began to form in the air above the bed, a three dimensional hologram of the scan data, loading inch by inch as the diagnostic program analysed his injuries. The spray from the water formed a faint mist in the air, and the flicker of green from the scanner cast a sickly glow over Arcann’s damp skin.

A hand appeared in front of her face, fingers clicking to get her attention. “Izzy to Kol,” said Ysaine, “come in Kol.”

She scowled and pushed her hand away, trying to ignore the way her cheeks heated. “What?” she snapped.

“It’s just that I was talking here about young Isaiah and you were off being all glassy-eyed staring in the general direction of our naked guest.”

This time her cheeks most certainly did heat, and her temper heated with them. “What even- he’s unconscious!” she spluttered, elbowing her out of the way to take her place at the sink. The water was hot, almost hot enough to burn, but she ignored it as she scrubbed ruthlessly at her arms. “He’s half dead!”

From behind her, she heard Izzy chuckle, and that just made it _worse_. This had to have been one of the most stressful and terrifying experiences of her life, and yet Ysaine- the one woman she held in her heart above all others- was laughing at her.

She did the only thing she could do to survive.

She shut off every part of herself except for the ruthlessly ambitious surgeon, pressed the pain and the anxiety down as hard as she could, and switched into work mode. “Dia, if I can get you to see to the head injuries, we need that skull fracture dealt with as soon as possible so that I can get in there later for the implants. I need to know if we’ve got significant bleeding to address first, my guess would be to check around the eye socket for any bruising to the tissue.”

There was a beat of silence, almost uncomfortable in light of the jesting and chatting that had been taking place moments earlier, and then Dia said “I assume you find it acceptable for me to use my Force powers, then?”

“Wouldn’t have asked you if I wasn’t,” she said, her words clipped as she turned back around. She had her hands raised out of habit, water dripping off of her elbows, and to her surprise Isaiah leapt in to assist her with the gloves.

She didn’t thank him.

“Ysaine, you take Isaiah and work on general recovery prep,” she said, ignoring the flash of concerned irritation in Izzy’s face at her abrupt change of face. “He’s going to be out for another couple of days at least, so get catheters inserted first. When Mako’s scan is finished, work on secondary injuries from most to least severe- he’s got a good number of third degree burns, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got additional fractures.”

“Aye aye, doctor,” Ysaine said flatly, gesturing to Isaiah to follow her over to the table.

Satisfied that they were following her instructions, she pulled up her surgical mask over her mouth and joined them. Dia was already at the head of the table, her hands very carefully placed either side of Arcann’s head; there was a very faint glow coming from between her fingers, enough to give his pale skin a purple hue. Her eyes were closed, her head bowed in concentration, and as much as Kol hated the bias that came with Force healing, she had to admit that Dia’s help was utterly priceless. It helped that Dia was one of the few Force-users who had a medical degree, treating the physical science with the respect it deserved instead of just resorting to unqualified, untrained magic.

“Alright kid,” Ysaine was saying, “you’ve done catheters before, so let’s get to it.”

“Yeah, but this is _different_.”

“What, you ain’t never grabbed an emperor’s dick before?”

She could tell Izzy was trying to get a reaction from her, or at least that’s what she assumed such crudity was for, but she ignored it. Coming up to Arcann’s left hand side, she pulled over her surgical trolley, the metal wheels clacking on the floor. “Mako, have we got a full scan?”

“Another two minutes,” Mako called. “Just running bloodwork. He’s got a couple of infections, and Zakuulans are just genetically different enough to most galactic humans that they sometimes bring back screwy results on their tests. Making sure I get it right.” She snorted. “How funny would it be if we went to all this trouble to save him, and then he died from a common infection?”

“Hilarious,” Kol said irritably. “Jekki, you’re with me. We need to get this shoulder guard off.”

The injury looked marginally better compared to her initial assessment on Voss a day or so ago- she hadn’t been paying that much attention, but they couldn’t have been in hyperspace longer than a few hours, at most. Between the first wave of antibiotics she’d administered several hours ago and the kolto rinse that Jekki had performed a few minutes ago, it didn’t seem as dire as it had in the temple. The skin was still red and swollen, hot to the touch, and she wasted no time in pulling away the broken pieces of metal and wiring that appeared safe to, tossing them onto the tray that Jekki held out for just such a purpose.

“Aha! Done!”

She didn’t look back at Mako. “Make sure all implants are deactivated, if they haven’t already burned out by themselves. Download the activity log if the programs are still functional, I need to analyse those logs before I install any replacement cybernetics.”

“You got it, doc.”

The holographic interface above the bed flared to life, a true to size render of Arcann floating in the air above them. The image flashed with what seemed like dozens of lines of information, red winking lights scattered all over his body and begging for urgent attention. She glanced at it only briefly, just enough to determine that there had been no further deterioration in his shoulder.

“Sheesh,” Ysaine said, “Tahrin really doesn’t pull her punches.”

“Irrelevant,” she said. “Concentrate on the patient and the task at hand.”

She didn’t look up to see the look that would inevitably have passed between Ysaine and Mako, instead setting to work trying to dismantle the intensely stupid shoulder guard. On closer inspection, it might not actually have been welded to the implant socket, as she had first assumed; she had a sneaking suspicion that whatever had ripped the cybernetic arm from the socket had crushed the guard in the same motion. An impact injury, possibly, falling debris? Whatever the case, it was impossibly difficult to pry the segments apart.

“Pass me the plasma scalpel,” she murmured, not looking up to see if Jekki had heard her, only holding her hand out in expectation. Thankfully, the correct tool appeared in her palm, and she set about trying to cut through the thick metal, a task made so much harder given that she had to navigate carefully enough that the pressure would do the job adequately but not risk burning his already damaged flesh.

It was a tedious, frustrating task, as she slowly carved away sections of the guard to expose his shoulder; she grunted in annoyance when the socket gave her an electrical shock, further proof that the safeguards built into the implants had been destroyed beyond repair. She didn’t even want to think about the damage a week or so of this had done to the interior tissue of his shoulder.

The minutes turned to hours, and piece by piece she carefully dismantled the crushed shoulder guard, moving on to the sparking socket plug. She only vaguely paid attention to the activity around her, far too focussed on the task at hand and the delicate care and concentration it required; the kolto rinse and various rounds of antibiotics they’d administered was already beginning to show some signs of success, with far less discharge from the wounds than she’d been expecting. There was still a great deal of tissue damage from the burns that would need time before she could move on to installing the new socket.

She was in the process of fitting the temporary shunt over the wound when she felt a tap on her shoulder. “Busy,” she said distractedly, not looking to see what the interruption was.

“Yeah, I know, but it’s been three hours,” Ysaine said from behind her. “Isaiah and me have finished up with the trauma work, and Princeling here should be good for a few days before we work him over again.”

Kol grunted in response, trying to get the vacuum seals on the shunt to hold while she applied the kolto tape; she couldn’t use a harness like she’d been hoping to, because the bone damage to his collarbone was too extensive to bear the pressure. Just another frustration in a very long list of complications. Arcann didn’t do anything by halves, not even dying.

“We’re gonna do a food run, since I haven’t eaten since before we left Voss,” Ysaine continued, either unconcerned or uncaring of her lack of response. “Waddya want?”

She gritted her teeth. “I’m _busy_ ,” she said, more tersely.

“We’re going to that noodle bar ‘round the corner, the one near where Elsie’s place used to be.”

“Oh, the one run by that Er’Kit family?” Jekki asked, leaning around her. “They do amazing soup dumplings.”

“Is that one order of soup dumplings I hear?”

The shunt finally established a seal along Arcann’s skin- which, hopefully, wouldn’t do too much to irritate the already inflammed tissue- and Kol took a deep breath, pressing both hands down on the edge of the table and letting her head droop with exhaustion. The moment she stopped, her body began to remember just how tired it was, and just how stressed it had been for some time now, and a wave of weariness began to crash over her. There was a cramp in her left wrist, and her back was aching so bad that she didn’t actually want to move, lest it hurt more to move than it did to stay still.

A hand appeared on her shoulder, and she tried not to wince as she straightened; Izzy was still beside her, and the look on her face was far softer than it had a right to be, enough that it made her heart skip a beat as her irritation at the teasing hours earlier evaporated. “Hey,” Ysaine said gently, “come on, you need a break. Get yourself cleaned up, we’ll grab some food, yeah?”

Kol rolled her head from side to side, trying to work out the kink in her neck; if it made it easier for her to avoid making eye contact with Ysaine, it was just convenient. “Get me an order of the hokkien mee, extra chilli,” she said. “Do you want my credit chit?”

“Nah, we’re good, I got this. Don’t wanna leave much of a digital trail, gonna use the old gold sticks.” She flashed a handful of Huttese money sticks. “You want a drink with that?”

“If they’ve still got moss tea-”

Ysaine made a gagging sound.

“-then I’ll have one of those, because it’s a tasty drink, and you humans have no taste buds anyway.”

“It’s made of moss. It’s a fungus drink.”

“Yeah, and it’s carbonated, and it’s got a good earthy flavour, and it’s about a thousand times better than whatever sugar syrup monstrosity you’re going to bring back.” She pulled off her gloves and apron as she stood over the sanitation bin, tossing the bloodied pieces into the darkness; her scrubs followed a moment later, and she did a quick perusal of her clothing to make sure no bodily fluids had crept through the various layers. “Mako, have you got the activity logs in some sort of accessible format?”

“Sure thing, boss,” she said, feet back up on the desk and a can of some kind of questionably sugary drink in her hand, “finished the data transfer about a half hour ago, I had a copy downloaded to your datapad as well as the main processor.”

Kol turned back around to see Dia rising from her chair at the head of the bed, her expression no less severe than normal, but perhaps with a touch less colour in her cheeks than a few hours ago. If there were circles around her eyes, Kol knew better than to mention it. “I will also have a moss tea,” she said, as regally as if she was addressing a court.

Ysaine snorted. “Of course you will,” she said dryly. “Anything else?”

“Spicy mint rice, the vegetarian one, with the bean curd,” she said. She turned her nose up in a sneer. “I refuse to eat any meat on this moon, not when there’s every chance it’s irradiated Nal Hutta chemlizard, or something equally as dreadful.”

“That’s half the adventure,” Jekki said, as he made his way over to the sanitation bin to disrobe.

With the orders placed, Ysaine and Isaiah made their way out into the hallway, and for a moment the music thudded much louder through the open doorway, that heavy bass drumming as a counterpoint to her pulse until the door closed behind them again. Grimacing as she rubbed the small of her back, she tried to tune out the distant throbbing music; now that it had caught her attention again, it was almost impossible to ignore. “I’ll take that datapad now, Mako,” she said.

She drew up a chair at the desk near to Mako’s workstation, and set to work skimming through the logs recorded from Arcann’s implants. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dia moving over to the far wall, sinking down to her knees and adopting a meditative pose; she had no idea the kind of strain that Force healing could cause on the body, but she took that to mean that the last few hours hadn’t been any easier for Dia than it had for her. Jekki, likewise, flopped down on the cot bed someone had set up in the corner, segmented limbs sprawled in all directions as he lay face down on the pillow.

Despite her weariness, she felt a sense of satisfaction that she only ever found in the triumph of a successful surgery; true, they were hardly even a fraction of the way through, with the far more complicated neurosurgeries to come in the following days, but still. She had done something extraordinary, and she refused to let anyone take that pride from her.

The activity logs were extensive, and she set to work skimming through them and making notes in the margins as she did so, taking note of each moment of stress and strain in the implants, of what was working and what was only making his injuries worse. She had to grudgingly admit that the program itself was a marvel, perhaps the best augmentation software she’d had the pleasure of working with in her years as a surgeon; but it just begged the question, that if the Zakuulans had the technology to fix their Emperor’s injuries, why hadn’t they?

Or rather, why hadn’t he?

She was buried in her calculations, trying to see what was salvageable from her older algorithm models that she’d designed prior to Arcann’s significant newer injuries, when Mako turned on a vidscreen and flicked it over to a local channel. She frowned a little at the distraction, but not so much that she told her to turn it off; it was annoying, but it was rare that a hospital or a larger med-clinic was quiet. If anything, it made it feel more like her old clinics.

“ _-extensive and violent confrontation between the Second and Fifth Fleet of the Eternal Empire, and the guerrilla movement calling itself the Rebel Alliance. The death toll is yet to be confirmed by anyone in an official capacity for the Voss government, but early reports indicate that the capital of Voss-Ka was entirely destroyed by the conflict._ ”

Mako whistled in awe. “Sheesh, you guys were down in all that?” she asked.

Kol didn’t look up to see the footage of the devastation. She didn’t need the reminder. “Yep,” she said flatly.

“Man. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen my share of battlefields- Corellia, yikes-, but that’s just a mess.”

“ _Both the Galactic Senate and the Sith Dark Council have issued a strong condemnation of the conflict, with rumours mounting that Zakuulan Emperor Arcann may have been present on Voss at the time of the attack. With his younger sister High Justice Vaylin having publicly claimed the throne last week, it is unknown whether the presence of the Eternal Fleet indicates an assassination attempt, or an effort to rescue the ailing Emperor from the clutches of the rebels_.”

“I didn’t mind Voss,” Mako said absently. “I really liked the tea shops, and the Gormak had some really fascinating tech.”

Kol just grunted in response, praying fervently that Jekki or Dia would take pity on her and contribute to the conversation so that she could bow out.

“You were with us on Voss, right Kol? I can’t remember when you joined the crew exactly.”

She wasn’t going to get any work done at this rate. “Just after that bad fight in the penthouse,” she said, trying not to think too much on the night that Ysaine had staggered into Elsie’s clinic bloodied and half feral from pain, carrying an unconscious Torian in her arms. It’d been the first time Kol had met Torian, and had been confronted with the mortifying knowledge that Ysaine didn’t have a problem dating younger people as long as the younger person wasn’t _her_. “That Jedi ambush mess.”

Mako made a pained noise. “That whole rubbish,” she said. “That was _bad_.”

“The behaviour of Jedi Battlemaster Seros was appallingly corrupt and short-sighted,” Dia said, her eyes still closed as she remained in her meditative pose. “I would expect such behaviour from a Sith, but not from a leader amongst the Jedi.”

“War makes people do things they wouldn’t normally do,” Mako said, shrugging. “I dunno, I mean, I think Izzy would rather gut herself than kill folk, most of the time, but sometimes they don’t give you much choice. Specially in war time.”

“ _In related news, preparations continue for the coronation of High Justice Vaylin on Zakuul, with prominent galactic leaders and celebrities making their way to Wild Space for the ceremony. Hutta Holo News will have a team on the ground to bring you the latest news and fashions from the capital, complete with a live broadcast of the coronation and the gala ball to follow. We spoke to renowned haute couturier Nes Kwii Kwii about what to expect on the red carpet at what is being touted as the party of the century, and what fashion faux pas to be wary of._ ”

Jekki groaned from where he still lay face down on the cot bed. “Because nothing makes war seem more inconsequential and blasé than sandwiching it between a far more enthusiastic fashion report,” he grumbled.

Kol stared across the room at him. “Jekki, I’ve seen your wardrobe, if anyone is gonna be wearing bizarre high fashion couture in this room, it’s gonna be you.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to trivialise war just because I like wearing sequins and belts!”

She shook her head and turned back to her analysis, as Mako spun in her chair to face him. “Okay then, question- is Nes Kwii Kwii even a good fashion designer? I’ve never heard of them.”

“They’re not a fashion designer, they’re a couturier, there’s a difference!”

Sitting in the back room of a Zeltronian nightclub, trying to read the analysis of nerve and muscle activity of the unconscious galactic emperor, while her support staff argued about fashion icons. Not exactly the way she’d seen the night rounding out. But then, when had she ever accurately predicted the twists and turns of her life? Twenty-five years ago, it was almost unthinkable that she would finish her schooling; twenty years ago, the idea that she might leave Ryloth to attend a foreign university was ludicrous. Even ten years ago, the notion that she might have a chance at being considered one of the foremost experts in her field was so self-aggrandizing and overambitious that she’d been laughed at for striving for it.

Maybe it was better not to try and plan for the future- she clearly had no idea where she was heading these days, and it wasn’t like things could get any more absurd than this.

“ _Moving over to Republic news, the Galactic Senate continues to be consumed by political anarchy after the failed leadership bid of Supreme Chancellor Leontyne Saresh. As we reported earlier in the week, Chancellor Saresh attempted to invoke the Emergency Powers Act, using the ongoing conflict between the Alliance and Zakuul as leverage for her platform. A consortium of Outer Rim and Mid Rim senators, rumoured to have been financially compensated by the Hutt Cartel for their votes, managed to overturn the measure and call for the Chancellor’s retirement._ ”

“Aw, man,” Mako said, once again distracting Kol from her work. “I liked her. She was easier to deal with than Janarus.”

“I think everyone in this room can agree that literally anyone is easier to deal with than a rich white human male,” Kol said, without looking up.

“ _It is no secret that the ongoing Zakuulan occupation has made the halls of the Senate a political minefield these last few years, and the alliance between the Cartel and the Republic has been strained for some time now. While some saw Saresh’s attempt to extend her chancellorship as an inevitable response to escalating hostilities and the need for stability in these unstable times, others saw it as further proof of her own corruption and tyranny- something that she platformed very heavily against in the early days of her position._ ”

There was a bang at the door, and they all looked up sharply; the tension in the room spiked sharply, and there was no missing the bright gleam in Dia’ayla’s eyes as she rose to her feet, or the way Mako and Kol’aya both reached for their blasters. There was no need for such precautions, however, as a moment later the door slid open and Ysaine and Isaiah marched proudly into the room with their arms overflowing with greasy plastic takeout containers and almost comically large sodas.

“Grub’s up!” Ysaine declared cheerfully, pointedly taking a slurp from the straw of the largest soda. It had to have been at least as long as her forearm- and on a woman like Ysaine, that was really saying something-, and the liquid that travelled up through the straw was an almost painfully neon pink. Ysaine smacked her lips together almost pointedly. “Mm, gotta love me that sugar with precisely zero moss in it.”

Dia glided across the room and very carefully extracted one of the containers without even asking if it was hers; likewise, she snatched up the far smaller can of moss tea, all while maintaining eye contact with Ysaine.

Izzy made a kissing face at her, and Dia made a noise of disgust before marching back to her seat by the far wall.

“ _-isn’t only contained to the Republic, with rumours of unrest beginning to stir in the Sith Empire._ ”

“Oh my gawd, why are you watching this rubbish?” Ysaine said, going around the room and handing out the packages of food. Isaiah followed close behind her, a head shorter and clearly struggling with so many hot containers, but trying not to complain. “Don’t we have enough doom and gloom without having it repeated endlessly ad verbum?”

Mako poked her tongue at her as she sat down on the desktop nearby, legs crossed and a pair of chopsticks expertly balanced in one hand. “Some of us like to remain informed,” she said loftily.

“Ugh, who wants that?”

“ _While no official statement has been made by Empress Acina’s office, there are claims that the Sith may not stand by the terms of the treaty made with Zakuul following Emperor Arcann’s disappearance. An anonymous source from within the Citadel stated that it was likely the Empress would publicly announce the elevation of several Lords to the Dark Council in the coming days, an act in flagrant defiance of the conditions laid down by Zakuul six years ago. While the various ministries have continued to function without official leadership, it is rumoured that Acina has had favoured allies working in the shadows as provisional council members, and will move to formalise their positions in the coming weeks ahead of High Justice Vaylin’s coronation._ ”

“Turn it off,” Ysaine whined petulantly, flopping down onto the floor with her long legs splayed out before her. “Put something funny on. We could all use a laugh.”

“Why don’t we just ask Mia or Maya to come back upstairs,” Mako said around a mouthful of noodles. “Isaiah blushed so hard he was nearly the same colour as them.”

The young man was in the process of heaving himself down onto the floor near Ysaine, and Mako’s teasing was enough to make him miss slightly, landing on his hip. “Hey!”

“ _In finance news, the manufacturing sector saw a surge of interest, thanks mostly to the escalating conflict between Zakuul and the Rebel Alliance. The Interstellar Stock Exchange posted a marked rise in a number of categories, closing the day up four hundred points-_ ”

With an aggrieved sigh, Mako changed the channel over, the canned laugh track marking it as some kind of sitcom. Kol didn’t bother looking up, because she didn’t have time for the distraction- she had months and months, if not years, of data to comb through, and she hadn’t slept in, well... she wasn’t tired, that was all that mattered. She had too much work to do to be tired.

The others chatted as they ate, laughing and teasing, and more than once they tried to lure her into the conversation. She ignored them. When a balled up napkin smacked her lightly in the face, accompanied by raucous laughter, she scowled and threw it back at them. “I’m busy,” she snapped, immediately going back to her calculations.

“Hey, Doctor Busy, don’t you wanna take five minutes to celebrate?” Ysaine groaned as she levered herself to her feet and swanned over to the desk, leaning down on it with both hands. “You’re gonna work yourself into the ground.”

Kol tried not to roll her eyes. “I’m sure the infections ravaging Arcann’s body will understand if I take an evening to get drunk,” she said caustically.

“Sure, they get it, they know you want to be the one doing the ravaging-”

It was too much for her.

She slammed both of her hands down on the desk and surged to her feet, almost slamming her head into Ysaine’s face as she did so. “Shut the _fuck up_ , Pierce,” she snarled, already feeling herself shaking from adrenalin. She had just enough time to take in the surprised expression on Ysaine’s face before she looked away. “You are driving me up the fucking wall with your bullshit innuendo-”

“It’s just a little friendly teasing, Kol-”

“I don’t fucking care! I hate it! I hate it so much!” If she had hair, she might have been pulling it out right about now; as it was, her lekku was curled tightly against her back, so rigid that it was almost painful. “Do you know how often I have to deal with people thinking I’m no good for anything but a quick fuck? _Do you?_ ”

Ysaine’s face softened slightly. “Kol,” she tried again.

“I’m trying to do something incredibly stupid and dangerous, and what is probably only going to come back to bite me in the worst way imaginable, and you want to bypass the risks I’m taking and the fact that I’ve managed to bring this man back from the brink of death to make jokes about how I’m only doing it to fuck him.” Goddess preserve, her eyes were burning with tears, but she wouldn’t cry in front of them. She refused. “Fuck _you_.”

An ugly silence blossomed in the room, broken only by the beep of the machines keeping Arcann alive and the distant thudding of the bass in the club below them. Kol was breathing heavily, trying desperately not to cry, and none of the others offered any reprieve to the silence.

All on her again. Just like always.

She took a deep breath. “Get out,” she said firmly.

That seemed to rouse something in them, some sense of concern. “Kol, don’t be like this,” Izzy said.

“His Majesty still requires extensive work,” Dia added, but Kol cut them both off.

“He’ll survive the night. He’s stable, and he needs time to recover before we jump into the next round of surgeries.” She crossed her arms. “Jekki, Mako- if you two can come back in the morning to assist with tomorrow’s procedures?”

Her answer was a moment or two of that uncomfortable silence, and then Jekki said “Sure. I could use an early night.”

Mako seemed incredibly uneasy as she finally answered. “Whatever you need, Kol,” she said, almost miserably.

Kol nodded, still not making eye contact with any of them. “I’ll see you tomorrow then,” she said pointedly.

For a few long seconds, nobody moved, but Ysaine finally let out a disgusted sigh, something that managed to convey both disappointment and anger, something that made her feel twelve years old again. Shame prickled over her skin, but she refused to back down, keeping her arms crossed and her eyes turned away as she waited for them to leave.

One by one, they shuffled for the door, and if any of them looked back at her, she didn’t look up to see. When the door slid shut behind the last of them, the silence of the room yawned large before her, threatening to swallow her whole; she took a shaky breath, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand and trying to ignore her shaking hands. Her lekku felt achy and sluggish, like jelly only held back by a thin skin.

Ignoring her half finished dinner, she crossed the room and washed her hands quickly in the sink, watching the water trickle away into the drain. The throbbing bass music seemed to thud in time to the headache building in her lekku.

She was so tired.

Hands clean, she moved back over to Arcann’s bedside, standing over him as she searched for... something. _Anything_. Divine inspiration, or common sense, just something to tell her what the fuck she was doing.

But he didn’t answer her. His eyes stayed closed.

She sighed shakily, and pulled the blankets up to further protect him against the cool of the air ventilators. She replaced his saline bag, and checked the catheter bags, and made sure that he was breathing comfortably.

She didn’t know how long she stood over him, watching him breathe slowly.

“Why am I ruining my life for you?” she whispered.

As expected, she got no answer. Instead, she turned and went back to the desk, picking over the slowly cooling container of noodles as she continued to program the new implants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the two month wait. New job + travelling for family funeral + unending sinusitis makes it hard to write sometimes. Thanks for sticking by me!


	15. Chapter 15

Zakuul did not quite know what to make of its new Empress- fitting, given that Vaylin did not know exactly what she was supposed to do as Empress. Where Arcann and Thexan had been tutored and trained and tortured all their lives to be the perfect leaders, she had... not. She’d just been tortured. There were things she’d managed to cobble together in her years of watching Arcann, things relating to politics and diplomacy and the economy and public morale, but it wasn’t ever something she’d been formally trained in.

Because wasn’t the idea of crazy little Vaylin being in charge of anything just _hilarious?_ Why teach the mad little girl anything useful? It wasn’t like she was ever going to be within an inch of anything resembling responsibility. Look, she can’t even take care of herself, her room is filthy and so is she, how can she be expected to take care of an entire empire?

She put her hands up to her head, her nails digging into her skin as if she might tear it open to reach in and claw the cruel words out by hand. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d bathed, and her hair was lank and knotted between her fingers.

The scars on her arms itched.

“-possible that we can combine the funds from the New Year festival with the discretionary spending from the quarterly budget, we should be able to put on quite a show even with the limited funding after the issue with the treasury servers, and I think-”

Vaylin glared through the lanky hair hanging in her eyes, staring at the pampered popinjay preening in front of her. He was everything that was wrong with Arcann’s Zakuul, this spineless peacock who was far more at ease with courtly theatrics than with holding a weapon. Why did the rest of Zakuul get to sit on their asses and indulge themselves in art and music and food and sex, when all she had ever known was violence and cruelty?

“-tweaking of the colour scheme, we can reuse a lot of the costumes and banners from last year’s Fire Festival- the Goddess of Passion makes a fitting avatar for your Majesty, after all, does she not?- and we are never at a loss for fireworks, Aivela bless, so we’ll see what sort of choreography we can put together that’s worthy of a coronation. Did you have a composer you’d like to bless with your favour, your Majesty? Perhaps a specific singer-”

The throne was too big for her. Even with her feet tucked up in the chair with her, the cushion was too firm and the arms sat too far apart and she couldn’t quite manage a good angle where she didn’t feel like she was about to slide straight out onto the floor. She hated it. She could hear things when she sat on the throne, things that made her twitch with the urge to glance over her shoulder or scratch at her arms. The SCORPIO droid insisted that it was just the presence of the Fleet, that it was inevitable that the voices of her thousands of children would be unsettling to a mortal mind.

It was wrong, it was wrong, she knew it was wrong. Whispers like knives on the inside of her skull, movement dancing like shadows that froze whenever she turned her head. She used to hallucinate in the Sanitarium, during the worst of the torture, but it had been years since it had been this bad. She hated the throne, and she hated the SCORPIO droid, but she had nothing else and no one else and nowhere else to go. At the very least, if she had power, nobody could hurt her anymore.

“Your Majesty?”

“ _What?_ ” she snarled, not even bothering to sit up properly. Her head was aching and her stomach was aching and she just wanted everyone to leave her alone.

There was a beat of silence as the peacock analysed her mood. “If you’d prefer, your Majesty, I can compile a suitable coronation celebration for you, so that you need not worry yourself over the mundane details. Certainly, a mind like yours does not deserve to be weighed down over such trivial matters-”

She knew, logically, that he probably meant it as a compliment, the same sort of hollow flattery she had heard the man use countless times on Arcann in his time as his entertainment curator; but after the agony her anxiety had inflicted on her over the past few days- first with the events in the Bakura Sector, and then the catastrophic failure of Voss-, it sounded mocking, nasty, laughing. Poor Vaylin with such a broken mind, can’t even talk about a party without falling to pieces!

“Get out,” she said, her voice low. She didn’t bother to look at him.

Another pause, and then- “Of course, your Majesty.”

His footsteps retreated down the long walk to the elevator, the dome otherwise silent but for the gentle lapping of the water in the decorative channel that encircled the throne. There were no Knights on duty, oh no- she did not trust them, she did not trust any of them. If she let them get close, they’d hurt her, just like everyone did. Better to rule in solitude than die as a victim of their mockery.

She curled further into the throne, resting her head on the hard back as she chewed absently on a jagged fingernail. They hadn’t healed properly since she’d broken them on the flagship, trying to prise open the melted, malfunctioning door to rescue Arcann; she snorted, the sound flat and bitter. She should have just left him to burn, and saved herself the trouble. Maybe then the other side of his face would be all melty and disgusting like the scarred half. It was what he deserved, after all.

... she wasn’t even sure she believed that. She was angry, she was so phenomenally, colossally angry, but more than that she was desperately frightened and lonely. She hated him so much for leaving her, more than she would have thought possible- she probably hated him more than Mother, at the moment. But if he walked through the door with his arms held wide and an apology on his lips, she was ashamed at how quickly she would have capitulated.

Anything to chase away the agonising loneliness, and the sinister whispers that told her she was unlovable.

“You would do well to make use of your sycophants’ talents,” came a sensual, mechanical voice to her right, and she gritted her teeth. “He is a resource, and you must take advantage of all of your resources-”

“I didn’t ask your opinion, _droid_ ,” she snapped, spitting the words over her shoulder.

“If you are determined to sulk in the darkness, you all but invite the Alliance to take your power and your throne from you. I pledged my loyalty to an Empress- not a squalling infant.”

Vaylin turned and stared at the SCORPIO unit, wondering whether or not the emotional satisfaction she would derive from destroying the mouthy droid was worth the chaos that would ensue when the Fleet rebelled. She still didn’t quite understand how the droid had removed the Fleet from her direct control- or rather, from the control of the throne, she supposed, since she hadn’t been Empress when the coup had happened-, but she was fast reaching a point of irritation where she was willing to take the risk. “I have the Fleet,” she said flatly, “and that is the greatest weapon in the galaxy.”

The droid didn’t blink, of course, but its’ eyes dimmed slightly. “For now,” it said, far too evasively for her tastes.

She twisted in the chair, hooking one leg underneath herself. “What does that even mean?” she said irritably. “That you’re the most powerful _for now_ , or that you serve me _for now?_ ”

The inexpressive face staring back at her was unnerving.

Vaylin sneered at her. “Hardly the most powerful weapon in the galaxy given that your stupid children fled from Voss in a panic-”

“I would think you of all people would understand the desperation of a recently caged sentient terrified to lose their new freedom.”

The reprimand stung, and she hunched in on herself even more than before, hating the droid even more. People weren’t supposed to talk back to the Empress, and droids even less so. Why did nobody respect her? Why did nobody care?

The whispers in the throne grew unbearable- it reminded her too much of the sanitarium, of having her brain cracked open again and again by her father’s lackeys-, so she lurched to her feet, arms tucked tight around her. She felt light-headed, and she couldn’t really remember when she’d last eaten; a cursory pat down of her pockets revealed a crushed pastry of dubious freshness, covered in pieces of lint and grit. The smell alone made her stomach rebel at the thought of trying to eat, but a sensible portion of her brain roused weakly to insist that she couldn’t be Empress if she passed out from hunger.

She choked when she took a bite, her throat threatening to close up when she tried to swallow; she gagged until she managed to force it down, and then threw the remaining pastry into the water channel in disgust. The splash echoed in the empty dome, and she wiped her mouth with her sleeve.

When she looked back, the droid was still watching her, still standing unnervingly beside the throne, and it made her skin crawl. She sneered at it, before marching down the aisle towards the elevator, trying to ignore the way the eyes followed her like a target had been painted between her shoulder blades; it was only when the lift doors closed and she was alone that she was able to breathe a shaky sigh of relief, scratching idly at the scars on her forearms to settle her nerves.

Gods. What was she even doing? All she’d wanted to do was get away from the SCORPIO, but now in the palace proper she’d be bombarded by snivelling servants and supplicants and all manner of inanities and _no one would just leave her alone_. The elevator felt too small, the air too thin, but the thought of the vast open halls of the palace crowded and swarming with people clamouring for her attention was somehow worse.

How could you be desperately, frighteningly lonely while still loathing the thought of people?

She didn’t really give much thought to her destination, simply glad to be alone in the silence for a few moments, but when the pleasant chime sounded to announce her arrival, she bowed her head all but ready to charge out in the direction of her room. Not that her room was much of a sanctuary anymore these days, not like when Arcann was Emperor, because people came in and tried to clean things and threw out her food, and tried to get her out of bed and make her shower and talked to her about organising meetings and appointments and parties and diplomatic sessions and ugh.

Head bowed, she stormed from the elevator- only to crunch face first into a warm, solid surface. She stumbled back a step, a ready snarl on her lips, but as she raised her hands to blast away the obstacle in her path, another pair of hands came up and steadied her. Large, warm hands, with fingers splayed over her hip and the jut of her elbow. The gesture was so immediately and horrifyingly intimate, so invasively familiar, that she reeled backwards in a panic. Her back hit the far wall of the lift, her skin crawling in horror, and she looked up to see who had dared to touch her.

A tall, strikingly handsome human man stood frozen before her, his hands still outstretched where he had caught her from falling. His jaw was framed with cybernetic implants, and his green eyes seethed with power so intense it seemed to burn in his skull. “Your Majesty,” he said hesitantly, before dropping to one knee in respect. “Forgive me, I did not mean-”

The armour of a warrior. The implants of a survivor. The power of a champion. _Focus_ , she hissed to herself, swallowing down the bile in her throat as she rubbed ferociously at her arms, begging them to stop prickling with the aftermath of his touch. “You are an Exarch,” she said, her voice cracking humiliatingly.

He nodded, not at all unnerved by her interruption; a lock of hair came loose from where it had been tied back at the nape of his neck. “Exarch Vinn Atrius of Dromund Kaas,” he said, still on one knee. He was very tall- much taller than her-, and even kneeling, he made her feel very small. Very delicate. Breakable.

“We are a long way from Dromund Kaas, Exarch.”

Atrius bowed his head. “Forgive me, my Lady, but when word of your brother’s...” His mouth twisted with disgust, noticeable even with his face turned away. “- _abdication_ reached us, I knew I could not sit idly by and let you bear this burden alone.”

Alone. It echoed in her head, rattling around between her ribs like the mockery it was, and yet... “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice more high pitched than she would have liked. He did not want her to be alone? Nobody had ever wanted that for her. Nobody had ever stopped to consider her needs, her wants, her loneliness.

“I realise that the coronation is some time away,” he said, and he glanced up at her again. His eyes burned with earnest interest and conviction, “and should you find my forwardness inappropriate, I will turn with all haste and return to Dromund Kaas to my duties as ambassador. But please, your Majesty, let me help you. Let me serve you.”

It was too much. It was too much too quickly.

It was everything.

“I have to go,” she said, her voice cracking hysterically. She lunged for the control panel, jamming her finger rather forcefully into a button for one of the lower floors. The doors slammed shut in the Exarch’s handsome face, but he did not rise from where he was kneeling. His eyes followed her as the elevator descended further into the depths of the palace, and it made her feel... things.

Her eyes were burning, and she wiped them irritably on her sleeve as the door hissed open onto the maintenance corridor below the largest ballroom. They kept a training area down here that was mostly for use by the beastmasters, keeping the wild creatures in fighting form before they were needed for performances at parties; they also kept a number of cells of various sizes, for the aforementioned beasties... and for those unlucky enough to have earned the wrath of Zakuul. She had intended to train, to expend her frustration and her anger in the sand of the arena, but after her encounter with Atrius, she was aching with the need to lash out at someone, anyone, if only to try and balance herself from how off-kilter he made her feel.

Only two of the cells were occupied by humanoids today, and neither figure moved to acknowledge her arrival outside the crackling forcefield over their cages. They were both aliens, and while she didn’t know a great deal about them or their species- Arcann would’ve been able to rattle off a damn lecture about their biology or their history or something, in that weirdly robotic way he retained information- she did know that they’d been party to the attempted coup with the SCORPIO droid, up until it’d turned on them and claimed the Fleet for itself.

She came to a stop outside the cells, staring moodily in at them. The male was blue, a Chiss, and the female was... something else. Rakata? Rattata? She couldn’t remember all the dumb names, she hadn’t been allowed to have lessons like Arcann and Thexan-

“Hey Queenie,” the female drawled, lounging on the cot bed, “I got a complaint about the accommodations.”

The casual disrespect made her hackles rise. “Shut up,” she hissed, though she wasn’t even sure what she was doing here. She just wanted something that wasn’t the suffocating burden of leadership, and wasn’t letting handsome and unsettling men touch her, but dealing with insolent prisoners wasn’t exactly an improvement.

The pale female shrugged, her facial jewellery glittering in the light of the forcefield. “Alright,” she said, with the sort of resigned tone one used when they’d been denied special treatment, “but I’m only giving this jail cell three stars on Zip instead of four. Your loss, sweetheart.”

Vaylin’s face flamed at the nickname, her stomach turning over uncomfortably. “Don’t call me that,” she snapped, hands clenched into fists at her sides. “I am your Empress-”

“I didn’t vote for you.”

“You don’t _vote_ for an Empress!”

There was a shuffling noise as the male in the other cell climbed to his feet, creeping up as close to the barrier as possible without risking electrocution. “I can help you,” he said, his voice cloying and grating, like everyone else who had spent the last week trying to ingratiate themselves to her since her ascent to the throne. Is that what Atrius wanted? He said he couldn’t bear to think of her alone, but what if he just wanted her power, like everyone else? “I have information- if you just let me out of this cell-”

“Shut the fuck up, Thake, you couldn’t find your asshole with both hands,” the woman drawled, booted feet up on the cot bed in her cell.

But he was undeterred; his glowing red eyes were unnerving to look at, and Vaylin scowled to hide how uncomfortable it made her. “The Ascendancy, we know things,” he said, staring at her unblinking. “We knew of Zakuul when we made our Alliance with the Sith, we knew many things that neither empire wanted us to know, things they have _no idea_ that we know-”

“I don’t care what you know,” Vaylin interrupted. “You tried to take my throne, and you worked with the Alliance. I hate you.”

“Hate me all you want, it doesn’t change my offer,” he said. “You want to rule unchallenged? You want to be greater and more powerful than the Wrath, than your Father? I can help you.”

Vaylin paused.

In the second cell, the pale woman snorted. “Thake, you dumb asshole, what are you doing?”

She got the impression that, if the cell had borne more traditional bars, he would have been hanging off of them trying to reach her. “Your father, the Sith Emperor- he kept his power scattered, he kept his _bodies_ scattered. You think Valkorion was the only double he kept around?”

Another father? More than just the one hiding in the Outlander Nox? She crossed her arms over her body, a painful shiver running over her skin. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“He really doesn’t,” the woman agreed. “He’s dumb as shit.”

He let out a sound of frustration, his eyes narrowed and the glow dimmed. “The Ascendancy has maps. Files. Inventory listings, for fucks sake, we know _everything_ he kept squirrelled away in those damn vaults, including you-”

Even that small reminder was enough to push her over the edge, and she slammed a hand outwards, fingers curled in a strangling motion; the Chiss went flying backwards, crashing into the far wall of the cell as her anger kept him pinned to the buckling metal, clawing at his throat as phantom fingers squeezed hard.

“Choose your next words with care, vermin,” she snarled, lightning spitting and crackling from her other arm.

He opened his mouth a few times as if trying to draw enough air to speak. “I can get maps,” he choked hoarsely, legs kicking feebly for purchase on the wall. “You can- kill-”

She couldn’t make out the word that followed _‘kill’_ , and doubt began to creep into her heart. “I can kill what?” she asked angrily.

“ _First body_.”

She withdrew immediately, reeling backwards as if she’d been slapped. The Chiss prisoner fell to the floor, landing on his hands and knees with a loud gasping wheeze. “Fuck,” he croaked, “my fucking knees.”

Vaylin’s hands were shaking and she was struggling to breathe, her heart beating a taboo that throbbed in her neck almost painfully. “What do you mean _‘first body’_?” she said, her voice cracking.

He sneered at her as he crawled awkwardly to his feet, using the wall to prop himself up. “I mean exactly what I say, your Magnanimousness,” he said, wincing as he rubbed at his knee. “Dear old Daddy’s first body- or so the files say. I haven’t physically seen it myself-”

“What do you want for it?”

His expression flickered, something sly visible for just a moment before he hid it behind a veneer of sneering disinterest. “Let me out, and I’ll fetch everything for you. The maps, the inventory, the holo images, anything you like, Princess.”

“He’s lying,” the pale woman said, still sprawled on the cot bed. Vaylin glared at her, and she shrugged. “He’s banned from going home, exiled or some shit, I dunno. Can’t go back on pain of death.”

“I’ve been back _three times_ since then,” he said, glaring at the wall where their cells were joined.

She waved her hand dismissively. “Details, babe, small details.”

Vaylin narrowed her eyes, looking between the two of them. Finally she looked back to the Chiss. “You can go,” she said, and his grin was unsettling, “on one condition.”

“I’m not interested in being a sex slave, thanks.”

She wrinkled her nose in disgust, her skin crawling with the remembered touch as Atrius had steadied her from falling. It felt, in hindsight, like the night she’d tried to take that servant woman back to her room. “Your... _compatriot_ ,” she said, gesturing vaguely towards the pale woman with shaking hands, “she stays here.”

The Chiss stared, and the pale woman sat up abruptly. “Come again?” she said incredulously.

“As leverage.”

The Chiss’ smile widened, and she had to look away. “As tragic and painful a condition that is,” he began.

“Don’t you fucking dare, Blue,” the woman said, on her feet instantly.

“I have no choice but to accept this arrangement,” he finished.

She slammed a closed fist against the wall. “You asshole! You fucking asshole!”

Vaylin waved a hand, and the forcefield on the cell disengaged, and the Chiss stepped out. “You have my word, your Majesty,” he said.

She nodded uncomfortably. “I want all of it,” she said. “Every vault. Every map. I want the location of the body.”

“Of course,” he said, bowing low.

“There’s gonna be a new body to deal with soon because I’m gonna fucking kill you, you blue son of a bitch! Get back here!”

He gestured to the door. “Shall we, your Majesty?” he asked politely. “It pains me far too greatly to stay and listen to my partner’s distress. If we could discuss our terms elsewhere?”

She wasn’t enjoying this sleazy, sycophantic side to him, but what choice did she have? He had what she wanted- even if she hadn’t known she wanted it half an hour ago- and she wasn’t going to get it through proper diplomatic channels. Arcann might have preened for the ambassadors and played at being a benevolent tyrant, but she didn’t have the patience for that. If the Chiss could get her to her father’s body so she could end him once and for all, she needed to take that chance.

And then, when her father was disposed of, she could deal with Arcann and Mother for abandoning her.

* * *

They had gathered privately in the apartment suite currently occupied by Darth Nox and Lana Beniko, ostensibly to celebrate an Imperial holiday with friends and loved ones away from the gawking eyes of Alliance staff from other factions unfamiliar with their celebrations, but in truth they were there with a far more political purpose.

Oh, they had gone to the extent of making the charade more than plausible, because they were all certainly in dire need of a party; it was ironic in the most painful of ways that the celebration in question was the _Quon’wontsis_ , or the Pilgrimage of the Chosen, the twenty day long festival that commemorated the twenty year long voyage undertaken by the ancient sith under Emperor Vitiate. Traditionally the festival was celebrated with themed days, initially more solemn in nature but eventually growing in fervour until it culminated in a raucous evening of feasting, fireworks and fucking. Descriptions of the final evening alone were usually enough to make good little Republic peons scurry for their moral high ground, and it served well enough as a cover for what it was they were planning on doing in the privacy of Darth Nox’s rooms.

Namely, to contact the Sith Empress Acina without the knowledge of the rest of the Alliance.

Nox and Beniko were in attendance, of course, as the somewhat ungracious hostesses for the proceedings; Kallathe was hardly dressed appropriately for the sombre first night of the festival, wearing what appeared to be a varactyl skull as a headpiece, plated in gold and embedded with fire rubies and polished obsidian that caught the flames of the candles in their depths. Likewise, the ropes of golden links and chains hanging around her neck and the cuffs upon her arms were far too ostentatious for the occasion, and her elaborate apparel drew more than a few pointed looks from those gathered, most notably her wife.

There was Darth Occlus and her husband, the fearsome pirate, currently not so fearsome as he entertained their two children on the floor, and Darth Hexid was lounging extravagantly on a nearby chaise, a glass of wine already finished and a second well on the way, while her apprentice- a sullen human girl who had said nary a word since their arrival- sat hunched and arms crossed on the end of the same couch. Their numbers were rounded out by Darth Venator, who had surprisingly agreed to attend without Theron, and wouldn’t that have been an uncomfortable conversation between lovers. Again, it was not an extensive gathering, but it helped their lie all the more that the first days of the festival were never given to grand displays and crowded parties.

It was a hard lie to sell, after all- given that the Sith Emperor was very much out of favour with his abandoned subjects, the very idea that they might be taking an evening to remember his actions was almost laughable. Thankfully Lana was not one to whom many could question to her face, so when she made the arrangements for the food from the mess hall and the decorations from the quartermaster, no one asked the very obvious questions. Namely, why Kallathe was allowing herself to be overshadowed by her parasitic former master.

Whatever the reasons, no objections were raised, and the Sith sequestered themselves away, with no one the wiser to their true intent.

They had been chatting for perhaps three quarters of an hour, nibbling on a platter of cold, spiced meats and enjoying a good cabernet sauvignon from Dromund Fels, when the holoterminal in the centre of the table began to chime quietly. With a nod to Bejah, who set down her drink and moved to a lone chair, Lana waited until she was settled before reaching for the call; as she did so, a faint silvery light began to gleam from Bejah’s dark eyes, and a crackling shiver of something passed over the room.

The call connected across the vast distance of the cosmos, and even with the finest technology available to the Sith Empire, for a moment they beheld only static. And then, a figure emerged from the pixels, and then a second and then a third, and then their features abruptly came to clarity.

Sith Empress Acina, and a Chiss woman recognisable to some of the room’s occupants as the Minister for Intelligence, the former Cipher Nine. The third individual was masked, but the mask was fairly recognisable amongst the upper echelons of the Sith as belonging to Darth Imperius.

For a moment, nobody spoke, the tension sparking as two of the most egotistic individuals in the galaxy stared off against one another in silence. Then, with a faint smirk upon her lips as she turned away from Kallathe, Acina looked instead to Lana. “I should hope this goes without saying, Beniko, but you are fired,” she said, looking down her nose regally at them all.

Beside her, Imperius snorted.

Kallathe went to respond, but Lana dug her fingers into her knee as a warning to stay silent. “And I should hope it goes without saying, Empress, that we both know that position was nothing more than a public humiliation for me,” she said, the haughtiness in her voice matching Acina’s. “A Lord does not serve as a Minister. It was a punishment for my failures against Darth Arkous, not a promotion.”

“And how tragic for you, to be found unsuitable for a position that was considered so far beneath you in the first place.”

Kallathe sprawled back slowly on the couch, her arms outstretched along the back of the cushions. “Get to the point, Acina,” she said flatly.

The Empress pursed her lips curtly, narrowing her eyes at her. “Nox,” she said finally. “Childishly impatient as always, I see.”

“And you’re just as pointlessly verbose as always,” Kallathe said loudly. “Get to the _point_.”

Acina’s tone was positively frosty as she continued. “I would normally assume I would not be required to introduce my associates,” she said, “but given that I have no assurances about the intelligence of your party, might I introduce the Minister for Sith Intelligence, and Darth Imperius-”

“I see you’ve abandoned me, Kaltix,” Kallathe said.

“Lord Kallig was simply wise enough to recognise the mutual benefits our friendship could provide.”

Even with the faceless mask in place, it was very easy to read the air of amused disbelief bleeding off of Imperius. “Of course,” he said, with the same droll tone that Kallathe could easily remember from their academy days, “it certainly helped that my only other option was to side with Ravage’s faction.”

From where he sat brooding on the far end of the couch with a dangerously full glass of wine, Maurevar snorted bitterly. Hexid leaned across her apprentice to pat him almost condescendingly on the knee. “There there, dear,” she said soothingly, “I’m sure Malgus would have been a sterling choice if he hadn’t been foolish enough to stage a coup when he did.”

He cast her a foul glare, and she giggled.

“Malgus, like all men foolish enough to believe they have a right to unearned power simply because they desire it, was no more fit for leading this Empire than Ravage is,” Acina said, her voice utterly frosty. “Although it pains me to say, at least Ravage has the benefit of having served faithfully as a member of the Dark Council-”

“Ravage is a xenophobic traditionalist who cannot tolerate the presence of anyone other than a highborn human male,” Imperius said.

“Then one could say he represents the ideals of the Empire quite well,” Maurevar said sarcastically.

Lana raised both hands. “I really don’t think arguing over the political motivations of our peers is the best use of this holocall,” she said pointedly. “We only have a limited amount of time until we are discovered-”

“That is correct,” the Minister said, carefully surveying the datapad she held. “At the current rate, the Zakuulan security grid will decrypt our signal in the next four minutes.”

Acina shifted slightly, bringing her hands around to the front, the pose at once humble and still proud. “The Sith Empire as we know it has undergone a catastrophic upheaval since Emperor Vitiate’s deception was uncovered,” Acina said haughtily, her tone brisk but defensive. “That we have survived at all is due in part to the strength in my leadership-”

“I am not interested in the propaganda you spew out for the plebeian masses,” Kallathe drawled, arms still resting along the back of the cushions; with the way the sleeves of her shirt draped heavily downwards, they looked like outspread wings.

Acina narrowed her eyes. “Have a care, Nox,” she purred, “your seat on the Dark Council is no longer assured. You should speak to your Empress with respect.”

Kallathe made a rude noise. “I have spent the better part of six years subjecting our former emperor to nothing but the gravest disrespect, and perhaps you’ll recall, my dear Acina, but I was not one to stand on ceremony even prior to my imprisonment.”

Beside Acina, Kaltix snorted from behind his mask. “We all remember the incident with the sex toy,” he said, and Acina threw him a filthy look. “Darth Nox and her Ivory Cocks. That much chammian ivory must have cost a fortune.”

“Regardless,” Acina said loudly, attempting to intercept any further snickering, “you have been absent for a long, long time, Nox. Others have risen in the interim, far more capable and reliable-”

“Sycophantic is the word you’re looking for, my dear Empress,” Kallathe said smugly. “And I know as well as you that there are still three empty seats on the Council- unless you’d like us all to believe that our dear Empress is sullying herself by still indulging in the frankly common work of maintaining a Sphere?”

Lana cleared her throat quietly, drawing Kallathe’s attention. “The terms of the peace treaty with Zakuul required that the Dark Council not be reformed following Acina’s coronation,” she said.

Acina tutted smugly. “And here I thought you would have had plenty of time to appraise yourself of the current political climate while you were reduced to being nothing more than an invalid burdening the Alliance,” she said, lips pursed as she tutted in fake consolation.

Kallathe snarled, the sound almost animalistic.

“Three minutes,” said the Minister.

“And you waste it with your bickering,” Maurevar said sullenly.

“Mind your tongue, Venator,” Acina snarled. “We spent a thousand years and more submitting to a ghost, to a _memory_ , who did nothing but leech us of our culture, our gold, our vibrancy and our dignity. Forgive me if I took it upon myself to preserve what little I could in less than a decade by whatever means necessary. Forgive me if it did not live up to your traitorous standards.”

Bejah took a slow breath, almost a gasp, as if she was steadying herself. “There are... proddings,” she said hesitantly, the silver of her eyes never dimming. She was clinging hard to the arms of the chair, as if it was an anchor for her. “The Alliance know we are transmitting a signal.”

Andronikos swiftly came to sit on the arm of the chair, running a hand over the back of her shoulders. “Y’alright, Sparky?”

She smiled absently at him, still staring straight ahead with her unseeing eyes. “It doesn’t hurt,” she said. “But they will realise soon that something is amiss.”

Acina huffed out a breath irritably. “Enough,” she said, with the brutal finality of a woman used to being obeyed instantly. “This petty squabbling should be beneath us.”

“What is a Sith if we cannot speak our minds freely?” Hexid said, holding her drink aloft merrily as if she was offering a toast.

“I have asked Imperius here today out of the hope that his presence will convince you my intentions are genuine,” Acina continued, as if she had not been interrupted. “I realise you and I have had our differences, Nox, but I want to convey to you just how fruitless it is to ally yourself with the Lord Wrath.”

Kallathe had not moved, glaring broodily from the eye sockets of her skull mask. “I have not allied myself with anyone,” she purred.

“That is patently untrue, Nox- because have you not allied yourself these past twelve years or so with Imperius, and Darth Occlus? Who, by the way, I realise is there with you, and I do hope she will hear my entreaty once more that she would be a fine asset to the Empire as the Lord of the Sphere of Technology.”

There was no flicker of acknowledgement on Bejah’s face as she held the shields in place, but Andronikos scowled on her behalf.

“The Wrath’s Alliance has a limited lifespan,” Acina said, “and she will use each and every one of you to her own advantage. I would urge you all to reconsider your commitment to her, and instead consider what our combined wisdom and power could do for the Empire instead.”

“As long as we served you, of course,” Kallathe said.

Acina’s expression was frosty. “As I said earlier, Nox,” she said, “I did what was necessary to ensure the future of our people and our culture. Just as I do now.”

“Two minutes, your Majesty,” the Minister said.

“Our strength lies in unity,” Acina said. “Not in submission, not in subjugation, not in fear. It is only through our combined strength that we survive- just as you and Imperius and Occlus survived the machinations of two Dark Council members by working in unity. This is the model to which the Sith must aspire going forward.”

Hexid laughed delightedly. “Oh Acina, darling, you are positively delicious,” she said. “Can you imagine-”

“I do imagine,” Acina snapped, “and I will see it done. I imagine an Empire where we do not insist on the deaths of three quarters of our Force sensitives in the Academies- where those who are not ever going to be strong enough to stand as Darths or Lords still have the opportunity to serve and strengthen the Empire in their own way, as archivists and medics and scientists. We have lost so much already, and it does nothing to throw away our own people just in pursuit of some wretched notion of purity.”

At this, Maurevar stirred, glancing towards the figure of the Empress with some kind of hopeless frustration in his eyes.

She seemed to feel his gaze upon her. “Oh yes, Venator, just imagine- never again would individuals like your sister fear for their lives, forced to flee into obscurity never to see their family again as the only way to survive the trials of the Sith. Can you imagine that, a world where families need not send their children into hiding? A world where your sister can finally come home?”

Maurevar looked positively distraught, and he glanced away sharply, but everyone in the room could feel his emotional turmoil.

“This is all very heartfelt and touching, Acina,” Kallathe drawled, drawing attention in the room back to her, “but I’ve yet to hear anything that sounds like a plan. How do you propose we achieve this magical utopia of yours, shall we start by singing and holding hands?”

Acina smirked, clasping her hands before her. “Zakuul is weakening,” she began.

“No thanks to the work of the Alliance,” Lana said irritably.

Acina waved a hand dismissively. “I will not object to the Wrath’s insistence on hurling herself at Zakuul’s war machines in the most dramatic manner possible,” she said. “It has certainly kept attention away from my indiscretions, but that is irrelevant right now. What is relevant is that we have the potential to throw off our Zakuulan shackles for good, and solidify our position against the further barbarism of the Republic.”

For a moment, nobody said a word; Acina’s proclamation hung in the air, crackling with potential and threat. Finally, Imperius sighed dramatically and stepped forward. “What she means to say is, I have found something,” he said. “Or rather, a Dark Lord serving under the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge has brought something to our attention- something that will turn the war in our favour and ensure that no power ever overshadows Dromund Kaas ever again.”

Kallathe finally sat forward. “And what would that be, dear Kaltix?” she asked.

“Why, the locations of all of Emperor Vitiate’s vaults, of course.”

In the depths of her skull, Valkorion stirred.

* * *

Satele’s smile faded as the call disconnected, rubbing at her temples wearily. It would be easy enough to retreat into obscurity now, with the state of the galaxy as it was; there were so many people gone, so many friends and colleagues whose essences had been snuffed out by this great, never ending conflict, people whose absences left a great, gaping hole in her heart. So many people who she could not protect, who she could not provide for, who had looked to her for leadership only to find her missing.

The Zakuulan rebels might not necessarily have done her any favours by freeing her from Exarch Aya, leaving her reeling in a world that had moved on without her, a world where she had been dismissed as dead or worse- an uncaring leader who had left her people to die. It was hard to come back to a world unfamiliar to her, harder still for it to be lined with the hidden barbs of distrust and desperation. So many Jedi, gone, and so many survivors in hiding. So many of them reluctant to talk to her, if not outright hostile to her.

She did not manage a day without entertaining thoughts of a quiet exile somewhere remote. A forest somewhere, peaceful, unburdened by the demands of leadership...

And every day she set those thoughts aside, and got back to work.

Today was no different, with the morning spent in deep meditation as she sought out the tentative threads of the connections she had once shared with all members of the Jedi order; though many of them had been severed by death, many more of them still lay dormant, frayed and withered by her absence and their waning faith. It took work to rouse them, to bring back to life what once had flourished and glowed, and like a gardener tending patiently to a flowerbed, she worked hard to nurture each link with the attention it needed. She had made contact with another three Jedi, including Somminick Timmns, who was unsurprisingly leading a rebel cell of five other Jedi and padawans on the independent world of Numidian Prime. They had spoken for well over an hour, discussing the events of the last five years, and the potential for the recovery of the Order. Timmns had the dubious honour of being amongst the surviving senior members of the Jedi, and Satele desperately needed more senior members to help her rebuild.

She climbed slowly to her feet from where she sat on a cushion on the floor, wincing as she rubbed at the ache in her back; she was not a young woman anymore, and she did not have the body for sitting on a hard stone floor for long periods of time. Those days were long behind her.

The Voss had allowed her the space of a small room in their temple, and while it was more than enough for her, there were moments when her memories of the carbonite and the Zakuulan cages flashed back to her, and the heavy stone walls seemed closer than they had a right to. She paused at the small counter, her eyes distant, waiting for the moment of unease to pass.

When the flush of adrenalin had eased in her veins, she set about making herself a pot of tea, watching the stain of colour bleed out into the water as the leaves steeped. It was soothing, and the smell was refreshing; she breathed deeply of the steam, letting the warmth flow through her and relax her. She glanced at her datapad to hasten the minutes, taking note of a new incoming message; she smiled to recognise the young Kira Carsen- or, not so young now, she supposed. _Hey Grandmaster_ , it read, as casual as her speaking voice, _dunno if I still have to ask you these things these days, but well, I guess Ona’la rubbed off on me more than I thought._

At that, Satele had to smile.

_Anyway, trying to do things the right way round and all- what’s the deal with Jedi getting married? To other Jedi, I mean. All the Jedi I know who got married didn’t marry other Jedi, although I guess Ona’la and Thexan are kinda close to that, but you were awol by that point so it’s not like they had to ask permission or anything, but yeah what’s the deal? Jedi and Jedi. Cause there’s this girl..._

Satele read the remainder of the missive with a growing smile on her face, a hand placed over her mouth as if that would contain the delighted laughter that bubbled up within her. The Jedi would survive, and would thrive. It might take time, and there would be scars, but it would happen.

After finishing and responding to Miss Carson’s letter, the tea had steeped for the appropriate amount of time, so she collected her mug and wrapped her hands around it, enjoying the heat beneath her palms. She lifted the mug up to her face-

-the doorbell chimed.

She sighed quietly, closing her eyes for a moment. There was no rest to be had, it seemed, even in the depths of a temple of healing. “One moment,” she called, setting her mug down again on the counter. She brushed her hands down the front of her rough tunic, smoothing out the wrinkles from a morning spent in meditation as she made her way to the door. A hand touched to the door pad, she adopted a courteous smile as the glowing green sigils activated and the segmented door pulled apart- only to blink in mild surprise to find the doorway empty.

“Hello Miss Grandmaster.”

She looked down- not empty, but merely occupied by someone much shorter than she was expecting. The Voss and the Gormak were all incredibly tall individuals, with none of them measuring below six feet; it had become habit to look upwards, expecting someone the height of her gracious hosts, but in the stone hallway outside her room stood Master Asmi’s adopted son, the young boy named Ru.

She smiled, the expression warmer this time, and bowed her head to him. “Good afternoon, Master Ru,” she said. “What can I do for you today?”

He was a shy young thing, but he had grown more comfortable with her presence over the last few months. Not enough to address her by her name instead of her title, but the fact that he spoke to her and made eye contact was leagues ahead of when they’d first met. “Mama asked me to fetch you,” he said, and as if this was explanation enough, he turned on his heel and began heading back down the corridor.

Satele collected herself enough to realise he had no intention to wait, and followed him quickly, closing the door behind her. “Is your mother unwell again?” she asked, hurrying to catch up to him. She hadn’t felt anything from Asmi this morning to indicate she was struggling, but sometimes the young woman was remarkably adept at hiding her condition from those around her.

Ru was marching determinedly down the hallway, a solemn expression on his face. “No,” he said, “it’s for Papa.”

She drew in a sharp breath. “Lieutenant Iresso is unwell?” she asked.

The boy shrugged. “He has a headache,” he said. “Mama says it’s a Sith thing, I don’t know.”

_A Sith thing._

Asmi and Felix had a suite of rooms in the guest wing of the temple, just down the hallway from her own small quarters, so it was not a long enough walk for her to quiz their son for more information before the door was upon them. Ru headed inside without knocking, heading unerringly towards the bedroom without looking to see if she was following. Assuming she had permission to enter, Satele followed him after a moment’s hesitation, so that she did not disturb a private moment.

She had been invited to these rooms on a number of occasions before now- usually to aid Asmi when her symptoms flared and she was reduced to a quivering mess. Those visits had come more frequently this last week or so since the Zakuulan attack, when Asmi had insisted on aiding the defence of the temple despite the risks it posed to her health, which was why she’d been so certain that the invitation was a plea for help from her. Never before had Lieutenant Iresso needed her assistance, and for Ru to so casually dismiss it as a sith thing?

It set off warning bells in her gut.

In the bedroom, both Asmi and Felix lay fully clothed upon the bed, but where Asmi was sitting up and looking vaguely composed- as much as she was able to in the midst of a chronic health flare-, her husband had his eyes clenched fiercely closed, his face contorted with pain. He did not open them at the sound of their approach, but Asmi looked up with exhausted relief on her face.

“Satele,” she said quietly, “thank you for coming.”

“No thanks necessary,” she said, coming to a stop beside the bed. She could feel the agony bleeding off of the Lieutenant, enough so that she instinctively waved a hand towards him, sending a balm of healing energy through him to ease the pain. “You should have called me sooner.”

“It’s not ever been this bad before,” Asmi said miserably, her yellow skin pale as she looked down at her suffering husband. “I don’t- I can’t help him-”

“Your son said this was a _‘sith thing’_ ,” Satele said carefully, watching her face for a reaction. “Would you care to elaborate on that?”

Asmi closed her eyes in resignation.

“Asmi, I cannot help him if I do not know what is wrong.”

She took a deep breath. “Felix is... was, I should say, the subject of Sith experimentation,” she said quietly. “About a decade ago. Normally his symptoms are limited to nothing more severe than a migraine a few times a year, but this...”

“This is unusual?”

Asmi looked utterly distraught as she looked down at Felix, running her hand down his arm. “Very,” she whispered.

Satele steeled herself as she sat cautiously on the side of the bed, reaching a hand out towards where Felix lay all but catatonic. “You should have told us before now,” she said.

“It was never an issue,” she protested weakly. “And then with Kylaena hunting the Children, we didn’t want... his record was already tarnished, if people suspected that he was compromised like that, it would’ve-”

“Shhh,” she said, settling a hand over his forehead; a faint golden glow began to emanate from between her fingers. “Do not distress yourself, my dear.”

Asmi took a shaky breath and looked away, as if she was on the verge of tears; out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ru move over to the bed and wriggle his way onto his mother’s lap.

“All will be well,” she continued, sending her powers out in greater concentration, seeking the source of the pain. “Tell me, if you can, do you know what it is that was done to Felix in-”

Her powers collided with a wall, something intangible and utterly impenetrable; it was startlingly enough that she felt herself recoil in surprise, and on the bed Felix moaned in agony.

“To the best of my knowledge, the Sith found some way to imprint the contents of a holocron onto a sentient brain,” Asmi whispered. “They had been experimenting for some time, and Felix was the first one to survive, mostly intact.”

Satele took a moment to compose herself. “Asmi,” she said, trying not to sound like she was chiding her, “did it not occur to you that this sort of information might be vitally important to our understanding of how the Sith-”

“But Felix is the only one!” she said desperately. “The doctor, the woman who performed the procedure, she told us! She promised!”

“Your duties as a Jedi require you to be mindful of your attachments, and in this instance you have failed not only yourself and your fellow Jedi, you have failed your husband.” Satele looked up to see Asmi with her face buried against the shoulder of her son, who stared blankly at her. Somehow that was harder to bear than if he had been angry. “Asmi, we could have helped him, a long time ago, if only you had brought this to our attention. You let your fear control your actions-”

“I could not bear to lose him,” Asmi said, her voice wobbling.

“And so you would reduce him to this?” She clenched her teeth and looked back to Felix, if only to stop herself from further chastising her friend and pupil. Anger had no place in this conversation, and it would certainly do nothing to help Felix. Taking a deep breath to centre herself, she closed her eyes and sent a probing tendril out towards the heart of the pain, letting her powers wash over it like the gentle flow of the tide. As before, there came a moment were she came up against resistance, and as before, she retreated to consider her options.

She tried a third time, moving slowly and carefully, healing waves easing through Felix like the slow trickle of melting ice. This time, she found herself confronted with the same resistance, but it did not treat her as a forceful intrusion; it did not allow her access, of course, but it did not expel her in the same manner it had the first few times. The pain radiated from within, dark and foreign, the familiar stirrings of the Dark Side echoing up through their connection.

An idea came to her.

Satele opened her eyes and gestured to Ru, who pulled away from his mother’s embrace rather reluctantly. “Can you run an errand for me, Master Ru?” she asked, as he came slowly around the bed towards her. At his careful nod, she smiled soothingly at him. “I need you to fetch someone for me, someone to help your father.”

“I can go find the Voss doctor,” he said, already moving towards the door.

“No no,” she said, catching him around the wrist and drawing him back. “I need you to go and find the young lady who arrived during the invasion. Her name is Evie. Do you remember her?”

He scrunched up his nose for a moment, and then nodded. “She wore the funny bright jacket,” he said.

“That’s right, the red and yellow jacket,” she said, nodding along with him. “She was staying downstairs in the dormitory, and she was helping with the refugees. Do you think you can find her for me?”

He shrugged, but looked back to Asmi for approval; whatever he saw in his mother’s face must have satisfied him, because he turned for the door again without a word. The sound of his retreating footsteps were swallowed up as the exterior door closed behind him, and then she and Asmi sat alone with only Felix’s ragged breathing to fill the silence.

“I’m sorry, Satele,” Asmi finally whispered.

Satele sighed. “It’s alright, my dear,” she said, glancing over at her even though she knew Asmi wouldn’t make eye contact with her. “We all carry our secrets with us, and we are none of us perfect.”

“I never meant to lie to you-”

“It’s alright,” she said, moving her hands up to cup Felix’s face between them. “Truly.”

If she couldn’t deal with the holocron and it’s defences, she could at the very least ease his pain, and so while they waited for Ru to arrive with Miss Che, she set about making Felix as comfortable as she could. The holocron rebuffed her a time or two more, but by the time the front door to the apartment hissed open again, Felix’s breathing was a little more even, and his face wasn’t contorted with pain as it had been when she’d arrived.

She opened her eyes just as Ru entered the room with Miss Che, who sauntered in like she was visiting a bar, and not someone’s private bedchamber; she whistled, eyebrows raised, when she took in the scene before her, and Satele held herself back from scolding her. “Well this is a party,” she drawled. “Little Cuz here says you needed me Auntie, lah?”

The informal address was... well. It was nothing she couldn’t adapt to. “Yes, Miss Che,” she said, rising to her feet for a moment.

Evie stuck both hands in her pockets and leaned back against the wall. “Don’t know what you want me for, eh,” she said, a wrinkle on her forehead as she continued to stare at Felix. “Master Ranos said I ain’t got no touch for the healing. Too light, she said, don’t press in or something.”

Satele smiled. “Actually, Miss Che, that’s precisely why I need you,” she said, gesturing to Felix on the bed behind her. “Master Ranos and Master Xo have both given me a summary of your skills, and the lessons they have shared with you. You were mostly self taught, yes?”

“Ey, Auntie, I was. Good at scooping things outta the air, real careful like.” She tapped the side of her head. “People think too loud, see? So you creep in, getta look, they don’t even know, and then- _bam!_ You know what cards they got, you win the table.”

“You used your abilities to read people’s minds and cheat at gambling?”

Evie looked utterly affronted. “Ey, come on now, why you gotta make it sound so dirty, lah?”

She put a hand on her elbow and steered her towards the bed. “Right now, I need you to use those abilities for the greater good,” she said, indicating that she should take a seat beside Felix. “Lieutenant Iresso has something in his head that is causing him a great deal of pain, but when we approach it to help him, it shuts us out.”

Evie made a happy purring noise. “I see you Auntie, I see you. You want old Evie to skim on in, see what the problem is, eh?”

“This is not something to treat flippantly, Miss Che- this is a real test of your skills as a Jedi, and an indication of-”

“All good, all good,” Evie said, waving away the concern as she settled down on the bed; she was grinning from ear to ear, as if it was nothing more than a game to her, but that grin slowly faded as she evidently began to probe towards the Sith barriers in Felix’s mind.

For a few long and painful minutes, there was nothing but silence; Evie did not move, her brow furrowed with concentration, and Felix did not react either. Asmi held his hand tightly, her face pinched and anxious as she watched the silent exchange taking place, and Ru stood by the door like an earnest little sentinel, his face equally solemn. Satele stood over them all, a hand on Evie’s shoulder to silently impart her strength to her; she had no idea if Evie was encountering the same difficulties she had, or if she was succeeding, but she intended to be there to assist the moment anything went wrong.

Assuming anything went wrong.

Abruptly, Evie moved, jerking a hand out as if she intended to grab something. Satele bent down quickly, to find her eyes still closed. “Miss Che?” she asked.

“Pen,” Evie said, her voice hoarse and distant.

Satele glanced around the room, but Ru was quicker, dashing into the main room and coming back with what appeared to be a colouring book and a handful of mechanical crayons. He held them out silently to Evie, who grasped one of the crayons clumsily in her right hand and began to write with what appeared to be her non-dominant hand, given the awkward shape of the letters.

Satele leaned in close to see what she was writing, frowning as she tried to take in the poor penmanship.

_Contents of Vault Nen Orenth Five Zerek._

Satele frowned.

_Location: Rekkiad._

She looked over at Asmi, who was craning her neck trying to see what was going on. “What is it?” she asked.

Satele swallowed the bitter taste of fear in her mouth. “I think your husband is carrying a map to Emperor Vitiate’s hidden treasures,” she said.

* * *

The medical suites in the Alliance were hardly the most luxurious in the galaxy, but they were functional, and they served the various needs of the growing organisation for now. Tahrin had always found them to be perfectly adequate, but as she marched briskly down the stone hallway, she found her stomach unsettled at the prospect of visiting a certain patient. An utterly irrational response, to be sure, yet she could not suppress the unease.

_Weakness_ , her mind whispered to her.

At the end of the hallway was a single room, quiet and away from the bustle of the main ward; it contained a single bed, and a wide array of medical equipment for monitoring the condition of the occupant of the bed.

Senya Tirall.

She was as still as stone in the bed, her face pale and gaunt, her skin brittle like tissue over her bones. Her long hair, normally tied back in a severe bun, had been brushed and carefully braided, the better to allow her to lie comfortably. Unlike the more staid design of the hospital, Senya’s room had been decorated, splashes of colour catching the eye from all directions. There was a brightly coloured blanket strewn across the bed, a gaudy affair decorated with flutterplumes of a dozen colours or more, and there was some kind of plush animal stuffed into the space between her elbow and her body, something that looked worn and well-loved in the manner of all toys owned by small children.

There was a touch of colour on her lips, and the bedside table revealed several little bottles and tubes of skin care products, as if someone had taken the same care with her face as they had with her hair. The soft strains of a Zakuulan opera drifted through the air, quiet enough that it would not disturb the other patients, and as Tahrin continued to survey the room, she took in the vase full of Odessen wildflowers, another splash of colour, and the assorted collection of childish scribblings that had been stuck to a nearby wall. More than anything, it was the drawings that made her heart lurch into her throat momentarily, urged on by memories of her own children bringing her illegible scrawls that they insisted with pride depicted grand adventures. It was an aspect of childhood that had been denied to her, something she found bewildering but nonetheless strived to encourage in her children, and to see art that she assumed belonged to Anya or perhaps Jaelin was another shard of guilt in her belly.

This was the room of a woman deeply beloved by her family, a woman whose absence was felt so keenly that they had done everything in their power to fill the space with colour and light and joy to compensate- and it was her fault that she was in this state to start with. In the tumultuous violence of Voss invasion, Senya had gambled her own life in order to keep Arcann safe; now Arcann was missing, Senya was comatose with no guarantee of recovery, and Tahrin was left clutching at the broken shards of her plans, wondering precisely at what point she had lost control of everything.

And worst of all, she was not alone on her late night visit. There was a chair pulled up beside the bed, and slumped in it was Thexan.

Their eyes met across the room, and a ripple of tension spread across Thexan’s shoulders; he looked exhausted, dark circles under his eyes and a shadow of stubble over his jaw, but even as she watched his eyes grew hard and unfriendly.

She steeled herself. “Hello, Thexan,” she said.

He grunted. “Tahrin,” he said curtly.

When he offered no further invitation for him to join her, she cleared her throat. “I did not realise you would be here,” she said.

“Meaning that you wouldn’t have come if you’d known I was here, because you’re too ashamed to face me,” he said, the words hard and clipped.

She breathed in slowly through her nose, her teeth clenched as she tried to relax. “I would be ignorant indeed if I did not acknowledge that the events of the past few weeks might have been upsetting for you-”

“ _Upsetting_ for-” He cut himself off with effort, lips pressed tight together as if he was trying to swallow the words; he reached forward and covered Senya’s hand with his own, squeezing her fingers once as he climbed to his feet. He gestured to the hallway, clearly unwilling to argue in the presence of his mother, and Tahrin complied, stepping outside to wait for him as he closed the door behind him. His shoulders were squared as if expecting a fight, and she might have rolled her eyes at him and his posturing if she thought the situation to be less volatile. “What are you even doing here?” he spat, all but vibrating with his hostility.

She tucked her hands behind her back, trying to adopt a neutral expression. “I came to see to Senya’s condition-”

“Why? So you can finish the job for good? Hoping to press a pillow over her face and seeing if her death drags Arcann over the edge as well?”

She bit the inside of her lip to keep herself from snarling an ill-though retort. “Believe it or not, Thexan, I am quite distraught at the circumstances we find ourselves in.”

“I’d believe it if you actually tried to emote,” he said.

_His anger is justified_ , she reminded herself, even as her irritation grew. “I did not want it to come to this,” she said, keeping her tone level, “but I will not apologise for doing what is necessary to bring about an end to Valkorion’s reign.”

Thexan just stared at her, as if he actually couldn’t understand the words coming out of her mouth. He let out an incredulous noise, not really a laugh, and looked away for a moment, running a hand into his hair. “You are-” He made the noise again, and it really did sound more like a laugh this time, vaguely hysterical and not at all friendly. “You are _incredible_ , you know that?”

“I can tell you do not mean that as a compliment.”

“Of course I fucking don’t mean it as a compliment,” he snarled, pulling himself back under control with visible effort. “My mother is- is _dying_ , my brother is missing and was in a critical condition when he was last seen, my sister has gone mad with grief and is killing innocent people, I had to explain to my daughter why her grandmother wouldn’t wake up- and let me tell you, trying to explain the notion of death to a hysterical child is just a- a _nightmare_ experience-”

“You have my sympathies.”

“Do I, Tahrin? Do I? Because I don’t think you’re _capable of sympathy_.” The words were like a slap in the face, and he must have realised how far he’d gone in his anger, because he put his hands up to hook behind his head, turning and pacing up and down the hallway several times as if to get himself under control. She let the words settle in her belly like a stone, cold and hard, and did her best to tell herself that words meant nothing, that words held no power over her.

She knew she was a liar.

His expression was bleak as he finally turned back to her, his jaw tight but with not so much of the snapping, snarling tendrils of hate and misery seeping out of him. He breathed out sharply, and tried again. “I do not understand what you hope to achieve by coming here,” he said finally, jerking his chin towards his mother’s door.

The notion of atonement jumped to mind, the confusing mire of guilt and grief that came from recognising a mother’s sacrifice for her child and feeling even partially responsible. It was an uncomfortable, unwieldy concept, one that was incredibly alien to her because this was far beyond mere failure, oh no- this was so much more than that. Failure was a simple concept, one that her tutors and torturers in the facility had drilled into her from her very earliest memories. Failure was untenable, failure caused pain, and failure required you to work harder to achieve your goal. Atonement brought with it shame and discomfort, the knowledge that what you had done _mattered_ , and mattered for all the wrong reasons at that.

What had she hoped to achieve here?

Thexan snorted humourlessly, shaking his head. “I should’ve known better than to hope for something better from you,” he said.

The dismissal frustrated her, and she raised her chin to stare at him. “I have given everything to this Alliance, and to working to end the threat Vitiate poses to the galaxy-”

“You have given nothing more than you were already prepared to give,” he spat, looming over her. “You think you have made great sacrifices, what- because you had to pay a lot of money? Because you had to let other people have opinions, instead of controlling the minutiae of operations to your satisfaction?”

_His frustration is warranted_ , she told herself, even as she felt her own frustration simmering. “Choose your next words with care, brother,” she said.

“Or else what?”

“I came down here out of concern for Senya, and you are turning this into-”

He snarled again, stomping away from her so abruptly that he almost seemed to be heading for the door, to lock her out in the hallway. “You need to ask yourself what precisely it is that you stand for, Tahrin,” he said, his voice low, threads of anger running through it. She could sense it in him, bleeding faintly out into the Force, uncontained and uncontrolled; she had a brief moment of disdain for his lack of control, but his next words drew her up sharp. “Because right now, your philosophy and your morality suggests you have far more in common with our father than I’m comfortable with.”

She took a slow breath through her nose before she turned to face him, her expression neutral only under extreme effort. “I beg your pardon?” she said.

If he felt the warning in the dropping temperature, he did not heed it. “I don’t need to repeat myself,” he said as he turned back to face her, shoulders rigid and his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “We both know very well that you heard what I said-”

“Oh, I heard what you said,” she said, the temperature dropping further until they were both exhaling clouds of fog into the air. Behind Thexan, delicate spiralling patterns began to form on the glass through to the medbay, ice crystals flowering with increasing speed over the surface. “I just am not quite sure why you felt it wise to compare me to Vitiate.”

“What, isn’t it obvious?” He stepped further into her space, utterly uncowed by the growing warning signs of her rage. “You choose solitude over alliance, convinced above all else that your way is the only plausible way, that you alone have the intelligence and the conviction to see the future shaped as you see fit- plans that you never share with others, that you hoard and layer in order to complicate them further, so that no one will stumble upon your master plan-”

“Stop it,” she said, and she could feel her hands shaking. The cold was beginning to hurt her skin.

He didn’t stop. “You choose death above compassion, violence above grace, and you keep everyone- even your own children!- at an arm’s length, as if-”

She lashed out, a snarl on her lip as she moved, striking him hard across the cheek and sending him slamming back into the glass; there was a loud crunch, and the delicate ice crystals were gone, replaced by a wide, single spiral, the shattered glass clinging together with the impact of Thexan’s fall in the centre. Tahrin was breathing hard, fighting with everything in her not to lose her temper as Thexan stumbled to his feet, wiping away a thin dribble of spit and blood from his lip with the back of his hand.

“ _Do not_ ,” she snarled, her voice hollow and echoing, the sound of the abyss at her feet, “tell me how to care for my children.”

He sneered at her. “Do not come to my mother’s bedside seeking validation for what you have done,” he snapped in response. “You don’t care about her- you don’t care about any of us, and you just want someone to sign off on your nerfshit so that you can continue blithely driving the galaxy into war, _which by the way is exactly what he wants_.”

“You have spent far too much time with the Jedi if you think the galaxy can be saved from a monster with open arms instead of with violence,” she said. There was red creeping in at the edge of her vision, and she could see it oozing over her skin like heavy fog slithering over the ground. “You should ask Ona’la how many died on Ziost, after she refused to kill Vitiate on Dromund Kaas-”

They had duelled together often enough that she had thought herself well versed in all of his tactics; but it occurred to her too late that- just as Quinn had underestimated her so many years ago because he had never witnessed her strength in a moment of anger-, so too had she underestimated her brother. In a rage, Thexan tackled her, slamming her into the ground with enough force that the stone beneath them shattered in concentric circles; the attack took her by surprise, and his weight crushed the air from her lungs instantly.

He had the upper hand in the confined space of the hallway, and his anger far surpassed hers in that moment; as they clawed and grappled at one another, they might have done actual damage to one another, had not several pairs of hands suddenly sought to drag them apart with shouts and curses that she could not make out past the bloodlust that had consumed her. She was ready to attempt to throw off the interlopers and hurl herself at him again, determined not to let him think he’d won, when the most peculiarly painful sensation washed over her. It was like someone had stuck a knife into her belly and dragged it sideways, tearing open her body and letting her life pour out all over the floor- except that it wasn’t a physical wound she could feel, and it wasn’t in one particular place so much as it was everywhere. Several feet away, she could see Thexan struggling with his bonds too, and his face was strained and pinched and his eyes were narrowed with horrified suspicion.

It seemed to satisfy him, to see her suffering the same affliction, but he still sneered at her as he slowly collapsed onto the floor opposite her.

It was not agonizing so much as it was exhausting, and it brought with it a sensation of being physically torn from a part of herself; it was like experiencing the prickling awareness of a missing limb, but unable to work out exactly what limb was missing in the first place.

The two of them lay panting on the shattered stone floor, utterly drained of all energy, and it was only then that Tahrin allowed herself the indignity of looking up into the faces of those who had intervened in this pitiful display. Standing over them with various degrees of dismay and disgust on their faces were the Chiss Jedi girl from Corellia and her master, Grandmaster Hervoz, the Zakuulan pilot Captain Vortena, and-

And of course. Because her humiliation wouldn’t be complete without Lord Scourge there to witness how low she had fallen. His eyes glittered with amusement as he saw her acknowledge him, but he did not speak. In fact, the duty of scolding them came from the absolute last person she would have expected capable of the task, but whose presence certainly explained the hollowed out state she and Thexan found themselves in.

“What is the meaning of all this?” Bejah said, her voice eerily calm as she stood with her arms folded in the middle of the hallway.

Thexan let out a growl. “I will not be spoken to so disrespectfully-”

“Currently, I see two brawling children, throwing a tantrum and disturbing the rest and recovery of those who have given their all for this Alliance,” Bejah continued, not at all perturbed by the threat posed by the two of them. Her voice was polite and level, sort of soothingly authoritative in a way she often quietly wished she was capable of. “Not only do you embarrass yourselves with this nonsense, you hurt those who are only trying to find peace and healing. You should both be ashamed.”

“I do not need to apologise for my actions,” Tahrin said, but Bejah was having none of that.

She appeared standing over her, in her field of vision, so that if she were to turn her head to look away, it would be obvious that she was sulking.

“Indeed?” Bejah said, her tone suitably unimpressed. She could see now, the threads of red and white bleeding off of both her and Thexan, like strands of light eagerly racing upwards towards Bejah’s outstretched hands; the tendrils curled around her fingers, wrapping around her arms almost lovingly as she siphoned away their Force powers. It would have been fascinating to watch, were it happening to anyone but herself. “That much at least I have come to expect from you, Lord Wrath. You don’t care about anyone, not even family.”

The humiliation of it all was almost too much to bear. “You have no idea what I care about,” she said, her voice catching with emotion she was loathe to admit to.

An ugly silence fell upon the hallway, and the tension was so uncomfortable that she could have cut it with nothing more than her hand; finally Bejah sighed in disgust, and drew her hand upwards in a jerking motion. The threads of light snapped, and both Thexan and Tahrin gasped at the sensation of the Force rushing back into deadened limbs. It was like pins and needles, except it was both physical and spiritual- it was something that existed both within their bodies and beyond it, far less intangible than the blood in their veins, but far more faithful than the decaying carbon of their bodies.

With the heat of the moment subdued, but the brittleness still present, Tahrin and Thexan both climbed awkwardly to their feet, wincing and scowling almost as one. Tahrin did her best not to look at anyone, but she could feel her brother’s eyes stabbing into her from behind. Bejah, for her part, seemed to have lost the spark of courage that had driven her to intercede in the first place, staring determinedly at the floor with one elbow clutched in the other hand. Defensive body language, uncomfortable and afraid- so bizarre for a woman who could quite easily stand toe to toe with the strongest warriors of the Empire and Zakuul combined, as evidenced by this entire encounter. “I trust there will be no more of, um... this?” she said, gesturing towards them without looking at them.

“Don’t come near my mother again,” Thexan snarled, shaking off Grandmaster Hervoz where he had attempted to assist him; he turned on his heel and stalked back into Senya’s room, the door struggling to lock adequately with the damage done to the wall during their fight. The silence that followed his departure was painfully uncomfortable, and Tahrin experienced one of the few moments in her life where she desperately wanted to burst into tears.

Someone cleared their throat, as if to speak, and Tahrin closed her eyes. “Get out,” she said, a command and a threat all in one.

Nobody argued with her, and thankfully no one offered up a sarcastic quip either; she could feel herself shaking, her rage spent and left only with the brittle remains of her misery and shame. The shuffling sounds of their footsteps departed from her hearing, and when she trusted herself to look up, blinking back tears, she was only mildly frustrated to see that Scourge had disobeyed her. Not surprised, just frustrated.

She wiped irritably at her eyes, gritting her teeth. “Does my humiliation titillate you, Scourge?” she said, refusing to look at him. “Or has something else overridden your common sense and convinced you to risk my wrath?”

She heard him chuckle, that oddly flat laugh of his that never failed to convey his disdain even if it was otherwise emotionless. “I think, by now, we can all accept that my common sense abandoned me long ago,” he said.

“What are you still doing here?”

“I was receiving treatment in a nearby suite,” he said, and that was startling enough for her to glance at him in surprise. He was dressed rather simply, by his standards, and there was some kind of medical patch on his exposed forearm, like a kolto patch or the like.

Attempting to cover her momentary lapse, she shrugged, looking away again. “In the hallway?”

“As I said, Lord Dara, in a nearby suite-”

“Yes, and yet you remain in the hallway. What are you still doing here?”

He chuckled again, and she closed her eyes. The humiliation crawled within her, unceasing and infantilizing. “Perhaps we should converse in the privacy of the room?” he suggested. “I hardly think you desire yet more attention.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to snarl at him and dismiss him, but something stayed her hand; curiosity, maybe? Resignation? Whatever the reason, she found herself following in the direction of his outstretched hand, stiff and rigid as she walked, refusing to acknowledge the twinges of pain caused by her brief confrontation with Thexan. This room was far smaller than Senya’s suite, clearly meant only for short term visits and examinations rather than extensive stays, and Tahrin did her best to look uninterested in the screens that had been left open to medical data. Instead, she turned back to where Scourge was carefully closing the door, his movements slow and precise. “Speak, then,” she said bluntly.

“Ah, impatience, impatience,” he said, moving back towards the lone chair in the room as if he had not just witnessed two of the most powerful warriors in the galaxy wrestling on the ground like common thugs. “He never broke you of that. You’ve your mother’s temperament in more ways than you think.”

It was an obvious jibe to rile her up, a pointed reminder that he had more knowledge of her mother than she would ever have, but she was too tired to take the bait. “ _Speak_ ,” she snarled, “or I will leave.”

Scourge surprised her- he sighed, as if he was as weary as she felt, and as he sat down again, the droid attendant came forward to reattach a catheter to his arm; he did not flinch as the needle was inserted, and made no show of discomfort as the droid went about its’ business. “I imagine you have begun to understand exactly what it means to be the Wrath,” he said finally, his voice quiet and devoid of the smug undertones he projected so often. “It is not a title that engenders a great deal of trust, after all.”

“I am not here to have their trust,” she said, and because curiosity had the better of her, she nodded towards his arm. “What is that?”

He glanced down almost absently, not at all perturbed by the procedure. “It is a simple perfusion of kolto and vitamins,” he said.

“What purpose does it serve?”

He chuckled yet again. “For the moment? It keeps me alive.”

That was enough to rouse her curiosity. “You are not...?”

“Immortal?” He shrugged. “It is difficult to say. Certainly the spirit of Vitiate has experienced death before- you yourself killed one of his forms on Voss, after all- but this is...” He seemed to struggle for words for a few moments. “This is significant,” he said finally.

She crossed her arms. “Are you dying?” she asked bluntly.

Scourge looked almost pensive. “For more than three hundred years, my life force has been tied to that of our emperor, and I think for the first time that the burden of maintaining my longevity has outweighed the benefits.”

“So you’re saying you’re dying?”

“I’m saying I am mortal again, my dear,” he said. “Which, to some, would imply the necessary eventuality that I am dying, yes.”

The beeping of the monitors and the serene quiet of the medical wards was suddenly incredibly alien to her, pressing down on her to remind her of how badly she had intruded. Even now, standing with a man with as much blood on his hands as Scourge, she felt herself in the role of the outsider. “What do you want, Scourge?” she asked, uncomfortable and suddenly desperate to leave. She felt raw, and exposed, and she did not want whatever wisdom he felt necessary to impart upon her.

As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, he huffed out a breath of air; not a sigh, not a laugh. Something tired. “It is hard to be the Wrath,” he began, but she cut him off.

“You have said as much, and if that’s all you have to say-”

“It requires loneliness, conviction. It requires unwavering resolve,” he said, catching her gaze at last. “For even if we could explain ourselves, there are none who could understand the nature of the burden we carry. The choices we must make for a better tomorrow, that require a painful and oft times horrifying present.”

She stared at him.

“They do not understand you,” he said, “They do not understand the weight of our path. The solitude it requires.”

“And I suppose you think you do understand me,” she said, her voice hoarse.

He nodded, unabashed in his certainty. “I spent three hundred years bound to the greatest darkness the galaxy has ever seen, to ensure that others would not have to,” he said. “You will make far more horrifying choices in your quest to defeat him, and they will turn from you in disgust.”

Tahrin swallowed uncomfortably.

“You must not waver from your path,” he said, eyes fixed upon her like lasers.

She turned on her heel and walked out.

She did not look back, but she could feel his eyes following her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thank you as always to the owners of borrowed characters- Thake belongs to MrDefira, Maurevar/Darth Venator belongs to Liz, Kylaena belongs to Michael
> 
> And for those who have trouble remembering, because Sith have far too many bloody names and titles, Kallathe Jen'zuska is Darth Nox, Kaltix Kallig is Darth Imperius, Bejah Amariha is Darth Occlus, Maurevar Thane is Darth Venator


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for brief descriptions of injuries and medical procedures

The first thing he was aware of was the fact that he was warm.

It wasn’t a monumental discovery, in the grand scheme of things- being aware of temperature- but it seemed to be rather significant because of the fact that it was something he was conscious of. He was finally aware of the world around him again, even if he didn’t understand the implications of that.

From warmth came a sensation of discomfort, and the awareness of his body. Cramped, aching, battered, bruised. Everything hurt. Not enough to drag himself upwards to proper wakefulness, but enough to make his sluggish thoughts begin to fit together into coherence again.

Warmth and pain. He didn’t feel panicked, and he felt like he should. It was difficult to try and cobble together his thoughts and his memories into something that made sense, something that would explain his current predicament and the lingering sense of dread that wanted him to panic.

The pain was distant, though, as if it was just a warm blanket enveloping him and not anything he could pinpoint. He couldn’t acknowledge it and go ‘ _that is my foot_ ’ and ‘ _that is my shoulder_ ’. It was everything, and everywhere, and it wasn’t overwhelming but it was just consistent. Trying to focus on any part of it particularly seemed like an impossibility.

Until it very abruptly wasn’t.

It felt like a jolt, like an electric surge but not really painful, and he was suddenly very aware of his- left arm? He didn’t have a left arm, he hadn’t had a left arm for years, not since Korriban, not since long before he lost Thexan- _Thexan_ \- and the cybernetic replacement he’d worn in the time since was torn violently from his body in the cataclysmic destruction of his flagship when his mother- _his mother_ \- had risked everything to save him-

- _mother_.

He pushed upwards with determination now, past the fog that wanted to keep him incoherent. He could feel again, feel his fingers and his toes and the aching throb in his head and the throbbing ache in his shoulder. He could feel a blanket over his lower half, and he could feel the soft heat of something bright above him, something like a light.

He could feel someone’s hands.

“... testing the connection between aurek five and six, now, Mako.” A voice, bizarrely familiar, accented. Not Zakuulan. Not Revan. Not his mother. Lilting, a slight drawl to the vowels. He felt the same surge again, like a twinge, and his fingers twitched- _fingers_. He had fingers again. He had a left arm. “Response to physical stimuli confirmed.”

“Neural responses showing normal,” said another voice, also unfamiliar. Different accent, sharper, more common. Still not his mother. “Feedback between brain tissue and cybernetic interface showing as green across the board.”

_What was going on?_

“Moving on to next port,” said the first voice. He felt hands, cool and firm, slender fingers. “Aurek six to- oh. You’re not supposed to be up yet.”

His eyes were foggy, and he was terrified for a moment that he’d lost sight in both of them. There was a shape looming above him, a face maybe. He blinked, lips parting as he tried to speak. His body apparently had no plans to cooperate, because nothing came out, but he felt a pinch in the side of his neck.

“There we go,” the voice said again. Gentle. “Back to sleep for you.”

He tried to look upwards, tried to speak. Dark brown eyes, warm and soft and crinkled with concern.

“Hey, Kol? Want me to call Izzy, let her know he’s coming round? She can let Lady Ona’la know.”

The eyes were gone, and it was harder to stay focussed.

“Not yet. Give him more time.”

He slept.

* * *

He woke. Several times, actually, but never for long. This time, however, was different, because it was the first time- that he was aware of, at least- that his arm was fully responsive again. He could feel pressure as slight as the weight of the blanket resting upon it, and the tenderness in his shoulder and torso where the new surgeries had undoubtedly been focussed heaviest.

And he was able to once again think and focus, and the question that occupied his thoughts upon waking was who. Who had done this to him, who had brought him here? Who had been so determined to not only keep him from death, but also to see him recovered to his fullest capabilities?

Who was it with the soft, cool fingers, and the deep brown eyes?

He thought he might have had an answer, but it drifted out of reach every time he reached for it. It was almost a name, almost a face, but it slid through his fingers like fog, leaving him grasping at insubstantial half-thoughts.

He came to slowly, groggily; he was warm, again, and the blanket was pulled higher upon his body than earlier. Apparently the surgeries were done with for now.

He could hear the sound of conversation, and with fierce concentration he rose to the surface enough to draw closer to it. A soft voice, authoritative, accented; he couldn’t pinpoint the language, other than that it wasn’t Galactic Basic nor Huttese nor Zakuulan. He blinked and tried to turn his head, hoped that the fogginess in his vision was only temporary.

He could make out shapes, colours, then clearer lines; there was a series of monitors on the wall, the details on the screens too fine to ascertain. There was a person there, seated in a chair, their feet propped up on another as they held several datapads and tablets over their lap. They wore a white coat, like a physician would, and they spoke not to him or to anyone else in the room, but to their hand.

He blinked, the details resolving further. The white coat of a physician, to be sure, but the rest of their apparel was not at all what he would expect from a medical professional- knee high boots with silver buckles, and an intriguingly short skirt that exposed muscular, golden legs. Were he in better health, he might have been more interested in the display, but for now he just found it confusing.

A golden face, and long draping appendages that hung over their shoulders- lekku. Twi’lek, then. And it was not their hand they spoke in to, but a device within their hand.

Something in his movements must have finally been enough to draw their attention, because they glanced over.

Brown eyes. Deep and dark and soft. The same person as before, then.

From the set of her shoulders, she seemed apprehensive. Watching him, waiting for him to speak. He felt like he was supposed to know her.

He licked dry lips, suddenly aware of how painfully dry his throat was. “You are twi’lek?” he asked hoarsely, wincing at how his lips cracked as he spoke. Aware on some level that he was without his mask, but too exhausted to consider the repercussions of that for now.

He missed the look she gave him, wry and somewhat amused. “What gave it away?” she said, her voice accented. Lilting and soft. Familiar. “Don’t tell me- it was my traditional tribal garb, wasn’t it?”

“Were you speaking twi’leki?”

“I was, your Majesty. Do you have a problem with that?”

The lights were so bright, and his eyes were aching. He wasn’t used to direct light on his left eye, not after so many years under the mask. He wanted to close them again, but he didn’t want to seem weak. “What were you saying?” he asked, already exhausted from the short conversation he’d managed.

She piled the datapads onto the desk beside her and swung her feet down onto the floor. The skirt was very short; she had intriguing knees. But she also had a white physician’s coat, and a medscanner in her hand as she approached the bed. “I was dictating some notes for your file,” she said, running the medscanner over him.

“My file?”

“Your medical file,” she said, as if it should be obvious. “Your physical health has suffered greatly this past month, and it’s obvious a lack of consistent attentions prior to the accident played a factor. If- at the very least-, you choose to return to your regular physicians, I hope to at least have something to-”

He gritted his teeth. “What are you putting in it?”

She paused. “Not to insult your intelligence, your Majesty-”

“Please stop calling me that,” he whispered, blurting it out before he could stop himself.

“As you wish, Master Tirall. Not to insult your intelligence, but I do not think my dictations will be of much use to you.”

“Try me.”

She might have been smirking. He couldn’t quite tell. But she still pulled the other device from her pocket- some kind of comm recorder, if he was guessing- and pressed a button on the side. Her own voice played back, clear and precise and utterly unintelligible to him because of course it was bloody well in twi’leki, not a language he understood with any fluency. He closed his eyes, frustrated. “Can you just- I don’t know, summarise it?”

The sound she made was amused, but she complied after a moment. “Patient has responded positively to latest round of antibiotics, internal temperature maintained within acceptable limits. Neuron jacks in thoracic vertebrae two and three require further integration with previous Zakuulan implantations, recommend reprogramming, speak to Mako about acquiring suitable medical software. Specify sensory impulse line function code two-four-one-one to compensate for left trapezius strain, three-four-one-one for left external oblique strain. Cranial implants placed beneath occipital plate are still producing high white blood cell count on all slide samples, recommend possible transfusion to counteract-”

“Alright, alright,” he said irritably, his head aching. “You’re right. I don’t understand it.”

“I suggest you get some more sleep, Master Tirall. You’ve undergone several major surgeries in the last few days, and your body will need time to recover.”

Her words cut deep, far deeper than she probably meant them to. “So she died for nothing,” he said quietly, not to her but to himself. Better to speak his shame aloud, to own it. He’d held his tongue on Thexan’s death for five long years, and the wound had never healed. Maybe if he faced the abomination of his continued existence, and honoured his mother’s passing-

“If you’re referring to your mother, she is alive. Not quite hale and well, from my last report, but alive, certainly, and receiving medical treatment.”

His eyes snapped open, seeking hers desperately. “What?” He tried to reach for her, to grab at her hand and drag her closer, but he was still clumsy with his new arm. She frowned and stepped forward, preoccupied with the cybernetic limb and not with him. “Where is she?”

“Not here, so you can calm down,” she said, some sort of laser tool in her hand as she fidgeted with something in the elbow joint. He couldn’t quite feel it in the same manner he might if she were pressing a needle into the skin of his flesh arm, but there was sensation there.

“Where?”

“ _Not. Here._ ” In her frustration, her accent grew stronger, and satisfied with his arm she stepped away again. “You should sleep. I can fetch you a sedative, if you require it.”

His head was spinning, anger and confusion and grief all twisting together as one around the knotted pain. “Who are you?” he asked instead.

She paused, and looked at him hard. “You don’t even...” She stopped herself and sighed. “A friend,” she said, “sent by friends. Or, at the very least, people who care about your wellbeing.”

The fact that she knew of his mother’s health seemed to support her claims, but she could easily be lying to him. More than easily, in fact. “ _Who?_ ” he repeated stubbornly.

When she hesitated, he went to reach for her again and he heard her grumble; her hand settled his arm rather firmly back on the bed. “My name is Kol’aya,” she said, “anything beyond that is irrelevant.”

“Who sent you?”

She tilted her head to the side, deep brown eyes curious. “You are very argumentative for a man only just now waking from extensive surgical modifications,” she said.

He swallowed, his tongue dry and awful. “I was healed by the Force,” he said, but she scoffed and shook her head.

“The Force simply kept you from dying, Master Tirall, and even that required some kind of sacrifice on your mother’s part. Some kind of spiritual energy transfusion, from what I understand it- not too dissimilar to the process of transfusing blood. The Force was not responsible for repairing the vast damage to your implants, or your prosthetics, or the tissue supporting those prosthetics, and it certainly wasn’t responsible for installing your new prosthetics and preventing your body from rejecting them outright. It simply kept you alive long enough for the work to be done.”

She said it so caustically, almost bitter, and her opinion on Force usage could not be clearer from her tone. “Then why did you help me?” he asked, almost as bitter. “You obviously know who I am.”

Her expression finally softened, fondness in her eyes. “You really don’t remember, do you,” she said quietly.

That was possibly the most terrifying statement she could have said. “I... what?” he said hoarsely. The possibility that his thoughts were not right, that he could not trust his own memory... horrifying.

“It’s alright,” she said, patting a hand against his shoulder. “It’s a common enough side effect of extensive states of unconsciousness. Things will become clearer once you’ve had more rest.”

He closed his eyes, if only to hide his confusion and his fear. “Why did you help me?” he repeated.

She was silent for so long that he began to wonder if he had fallen asleep again. “A woman I care for a great deal asked for my help,” she said quietly. “I could no more say no to her than I could stop your Eternal Fleets by myself.”

He was tired. He was tired and he was confused and he was frustrated and in pain. “They’re not my fleets anymore,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say.

“Indeed,” she said, and he was so busy sulking that he didn’t notice the sedative in her hand until it was too late, and the needle slid beneath his skin. “Rest, Master Tirall. There will be time for questions later.”

He slept.

* * *

He woke. It was easier this time, less of a battle to shift from unconscious to awareness. The room was warm, and he was warm, and his body still ached. The blanket lay across his midriff, exposing the ugly scar over his belly where the Wrath had attacked him.

Gods. That had really happened. He had really faced the Wrath and survived- and more than that, she had declared herself to be... his sister?

“Good afternoon.”

He turned his head with some difficulty, wincing as he opened his eyes; the lights were not terribly bright, really, but he might as well have been standing five feet from the sun for all the good it did him. When his vision cleared, far more so in his right eye than his left eye, he could see the twi’lek again sitting at a desk nearby, a stylus in her hand as she diligently continued writing. Kol’aya. She didn’t look up.

He winced, blinking. “Afternoon?”

“You have been asleep for nineteen hours,” she said, still writing. She finally set the stylus down, folding her hands together in front of her for a moment. “Are you feeling any pain?”

He blinked several times, trying to categorise the way his body felt. “I, um...” It was hard to swallow. “In my shoulder.”

She nodded, apparently unsurprised by this; she climbed to her feet, and she was in a different outfit to last time, but still with the white coat over the top. If possible, the skirt was shorter than last time, and the top she wore was gauzy and glittery. She looked like she was on her way to a nightclub, rather than performing surgery-

He blinked again. Now that that thought was in his head, he could actually hear the faint pounding bass of heavy dance music, and the outfit suddenly made more sense. The outfit... was familiar? _You really don’t remember_ , she’d said before.

He was supposed to remember her. He was supposed to... know her? How could he have known a twi’lek?

“Where in your shoulder?” she asked, coming to stand beside the bed; she already had a medscanner in hand, and her fingers were gentle as she pressed along the line where flesh joined metal.

“Are we in a nightclub?”

Her lips twisted into a wry grin. “We are _near_ to a nightclub,” she said cryptically, “now tell me where the pain is.”

“Why are we near a nightclub?”

“Because we couldn’t very well march up to the front door of a hospital and put you through admissions and submit insurance paperwork, now, could we?” Her fingers pressed strategically along the muscles, testing the scar tissue, and when he hissed in pain she stopped instantly, smoothing gently over the spot as if to soothe the ache. “There we go.”

He felt the brief sting of the subdermal injection, but he turned his face away, not wanting to see.

“How are you feeling otherwise?” she asked, apparently unconcerned with his uncooperative mood. “Do you want to sit up, or shower? Do you want to test the arm?”

It occurred to him that if he’d been unconscious in her presence for numerous days, as her mentions towards hours of surgery seem to imply, then she’d presumably seen him completely naked, and pathetically so. Gods, he would have had... bathroom... _needs_ , and she or someone would have-

“Your blood pressure indicates you aren’t quite comfortable at the moment, Master Tirall,” she said, with just a hint of amusement in her tone. As if she could tell what was on his mind. “Shall I fetch you something for that?”

“Why are you doing this?” he asked instead, his face still turned away. This, all of this, was humiliating and frustrating and humbling in a way he didn’t have words for. He didn’t like her laughing at him, and he didn’t like being so weak and powerless.

“Because I was asked to help you,” she said, the same answer she gave last time.

“By _who?_ ” Who could possibly want to help him, after everything he’d done over the past five or six years? Who in the entire galaxy could possibly have any kindness in them towards him, and be so invested in him that they’d want him kept safe and healed after all of his cruelty and stupidity?

She sighed, apparently resigned to his stubbornness. “By... Ysaine Pierce,” she said hesitantly, as if that should make any sense to him whatsoever.

He frowned, scrabbling through his memory to try and find some reference to who that was; going by her amused smile, she found his confusion to be entertaining. “And who is that, that they should care about my survival?” he asked snappishly.

This was the first time he’d been lucid enough to take in the details of her face, like the fact that she had a smattering of paler spots over her nose and cheeks that he supposed was the twi’lek equivalent of freckles, and that her eyebrows were only tattoos. The left one was slightly crooked. Her eyes weren’t entirely brown, but had a dark ring of gold surrounding the pupils, and more than that she had small lines beside them, like she’d spent a great deal of time frowning in concentration until her skin had been permanently marked. She was peculiarly imperfect, and he wasn’t actually sure why that thought had even occurred to him in the first place.

She was watching him, lips pursed, as if weighing up whether or not she wanted to answer him. Finally she settled her medscanner back into her pocket, apparently deciding the time for examinations had passed. “Ysaine Pierce is the current warlord of Clan Lok, a house of Mandalore. She was the champion-”

“Champion of the Great Hunt, I remember now.” He closed his eyes, resignation settling in his bones. “So, the Mandalorians want vengeance for the death of the leader, is it? They snatch me from the gates of the underworld so they can take out their frustrations on me, am I right?”

“And why do you think I would have wasted my time saving your life if it was only to be for the purpose of giving the clans a good hunt?”

The way she said it, always distancing herself from the concept of Mandalore, stirred a suspicion in him. “You aren’t Mandalorian?”

He could hear the laughter in her voice, as if the question amused her. As if she found it funny that he needed to ask. _You really don’t remember_. “I am not, no,” she said. “But that does not mean that I do not have a tremendous respect for the clans, and for Ysaine.” She cleared her throat. “And I was- prior to Ysaine’s involvement- asked by Senya to take care of you.”

His eyes snapped open, and he grabbed for her wrist. “Senya?” he asked urgently.

There was a sense of trepidation in her eyes as she gazed down at him. “Yes,” she said evenly.

“You know my mother?”

“I do.”

She offered no further explanation, and his brain remained stubbornly blank as to their connection. There were shadows in there, half-formed thoughts, but nothing that he could concentrate on with any clarity.

_Try to focus on one memory_ , Revan whispered in his mind.

Kol’aya huffed out a breath. “Are we perhaps done with the interrogations for now? I’d much prefer to see about getting you out of that bed, perhaps beginning your physical rehabilitation.”

He sank back against the pillow in abject frustration, his eyes closing again. “Why do you even care?”

“Hmm, if you are looking to induce sympathy, your Majesty-”

“I asked you to stop calling me that.”

“-then I’m afraid you waste both of our time. Right now I have invested a significant amount of effort into keeping you alive, and seeing you hale again, and I’d hate to have wasted that time.”

It was so painfully pragmatic, and matter-of-fact, and it hurt all the more because of it. Of course no one had rescued him out of the goodness of their heart, no one had leapt to save him because they believed in him or missed him or loved him. Everyone who had ever cared about him was dead. All two of them.

There was a ball of something ugly and miserable in his throat, something that he wasn’t going to admit was tears. That was pathetic and laughable, and no matter how far he’d fallen, he wouldn’t cry in front of a stranger.

He heard her moving about near to the bed, and felt a slight pressure on the edge of the mattress, as if she was leaning on it. “But, if you are not up to exerting yourself just yet, we can leave it for another day or two,” she said, her voice gentler than it had been a moment ago. “Do you require food, or anything to improve your comfort?”

What good was comfort, when he should have been dead anyway. Better if his mother had just given up on him, and let him die naturally- then she’d still be alive. Better if he’d died that day in the throne room, instead of his brother. Then he’d still be alive too.

They all deserved it more than him.

“As I said earlier, Master Tirall, your mother is alive.” When he opened his eyes, she was watching him closely, no trace of amusement in her gaze. She raised her eyebrows at him. “Or was I not to take that as something I should have been responding to?”

He looked away, cheeks heating. “I didn’t know I’d said it out loud,” he said gruffly, trying to raise a hand to wipe his eyes as discreetly as possible.

When she offered him a tissue wordlessly, he felt the shame burn hard against his skin and his bones; he took it, because there was no way to salvage his pride right now, and he might as well suffer the indignity of having a stranger watch him cry. “Regardless,” she said gently, walking around to the top of the bed to stand by his head, “she is alive, and being cared for on Odessen. I can speak for the quality of the facilities they have, and I don’t doubt she is in the best of care.”

He almost jumped out of his skin when she slid her hand under his shoulder, her fingers cool and firm against his skin. “What are you doing?” he asked, frustrated at the way his voice broke for a moment.

“Checking the seam on your prosthetic interface,” she said, and indeed, her hand did seem to be tracing the line on his back where flesh met metal. She put her other hand on the side of his head, almost half supporting it. “I’m just going to test the muscle response, if you’re alright with that.”

She had her hands on him. On his- on his face, and his skin, it was all but crawling from the sensation of her touch, and Izax forfend, her shirt was actually quite see-through from this close up.

_You’re a brat, and a spoiled one at that, and you’re used to everyone falling on your dick as soon as you look at them._

He choked on a breath, the words coming unbidden into his head; he slammed his eyes closed, clenching his jaw.

She paused. “Master Tirall, if you tense, it’s only going to hurt.”

He breathed out sharply through his nose. “I don’t care,” he said from between gritted teeth, hoping that she didn’t make the connection as to what was bothering him. He’d seen her in a short skirt before, he knew that, and he knew that she didn’t like him _at all_.

She waited a moment, as if to see if he’d change his mind, and then sighed. “Very well,” she said.

It _did_ hurt. Stars above and below, it hurt far more than he was ready for; it wasn’t quite like she was massaging the tissue, but he had no other way to describe it, and Scyva save him but it hurt. She kept adjusting his head, and a few times she stopped what she was doing to put her hand on top of his shoulder to firmly press it back down flat again; when the pain had gotten too much, he’d begun to hunch in on himself, as if trying to shield his injured side from further agony. “Just relax,” she soothed each time, her hands going easy on him until he settled again, and then she’d pick up again where they’d left off.

“Did you not go through physical therapy with your first surgeries?” she asked at one point, apparently as a means to distract him.

It was hard to draw enough breath to talk, because his chest felt far too tight to breathe in properly. “I- I don’t...” Remember? Was that it? “I don’t think so?”

“Mm, that doesn’t surprise me then- your implants were state of the art, but the integration with the tissue was a mess.” Something she did with her fingers made him gasp, and she stopped immediately. “Not good?”

“Not good!”

She carefully let go of his head, setting him back down on the bed, before reaching into her pocket and pulling out the same recording device she’d been using the other day. “Increased inflammation in subscapularis tissue, above thoracic vertebrae three and four-”

“What does that mean?”

She chuckled, the sound warm instead of mocking. “It means, Master Tirall, that you have a very tender shoulder, and after five years of scar tissue being constantly irritated and inflamed by poor rehabilitative practices, it is protesting at being forced to work again.”

He swallowed down the worst of the pain, but he still felt light-headed from it. “I have been using my arm and my shoulder for years,” he said, but she shook her head.

“We can use an injured body part, but our body adjusts, it compensates for the injury, and our muscles learn to work in ways they were not intended to, all to support the injury. That is precisely what happened with you- your original prosthesis was extraordinary technology, yes, but it was not integrated with your body in any sort of optimal manner.” Her fingers were rubbing slowly along the curve of his neck, hard enough to make him grit his teeth, but not quite unbearable. “If I had to wager a guess, I’d say you’ve been in quite a lot of pain for quite a long time?”

He hated that she could tell that just from touching him, like she was reading his mind and seeing into the small, dark places he hid inside himself. “The pain makes me focus,” he said stiltedly, but she _tsk_ ed loudly at him.

“The pain distracts you,” she said firmly. “It is not a focus. Pain limits our potential and reduces our range- our range of movement, our range of stamina, our range of tolerance.”

He felt so exposed, lying there while she rubbed her hands all over him. Lying there with his head in her hands, so that she could just twist abruptly to the side and snap his neck if the desire took her. Lying there while her were memories intact, knowing that she knew him, and unable to ask how she knew him. “I don’t care.”

“Well, you should care.”

“I _don’t_. And I don’t understand why you _do_.”

“For many reasons,” she said. She took his head in both hands, and he tensed. “But we can shorten the argument substantially if we just reduce it down to the fact that I am in a position to help, I was _asked_ to help, and I don’t like to see people in pain.”

He gritted his teeth. “Maybe I deserve the pain,” he said, and again she made a noise expressing her disapproval.

“Inadequate medical care is not a legal or moral punishment,” she said firmly. She had her fingers digging into the back of his neck, at the base of his skull, and it felt frustratingly good. He wanted her to keep touching him. He never wanted to touch her again. “Self flagellation is all well and good for some, Master Tirall, but if you believe your suffering to be a just recompense for your actions, I have to strongly disagree.”

“Are you an idiot, or just naive?”

Her brow furrowed with a frown. “I am the woman holding your survival in her hands, Master Tirall, so I’d suggest a less combative attitude would do wonders for you.”

The words were out before he could stop himself. “Well, maybe I should have died. Maybe I _wanted_ to die.”

She cocked her head to the side, the frown deepening. “And did you?” she asked, no hint of censure in the question. Simply curiosity.

She stared right through him, it felt like. She looked good standing over him. “Maybe,” he said hoarsely.

They were both silent for a long few moments, and he realised after a second that her hands had stopped digging in quite so forcefully, and her fingers were just gently soothing. “Well,” she said quietly, “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there will be no dying on my watch.”

He hated the way she looked at him. “Just leave me alone,” he said, jerking his head to the side aggressively to dislodge her hands. She complied, with some obvious reluctance, and came back around to the side of the bed instead. He very deliberately stared in the other direction.

“Master Tirall,” she began, but he rolled very pointedly onto his side- or rather, he tried to roll onto his side. It hurt far too much to actually go through with the motion, but he hoped that he’d made his mood abundantly clear.

“You have not eaten,” she said, trying again.

Arcann closed his eyes. “I asked you to leave me alone,” he said.

He heard the crinkle of fabric, the creak of her boots as she stepped back. “Very well, Master Tirall,” she said. “You may rest for now.”

_For now_ , she said, as if she was expecting that tomorrow he’d awaken bright and bubbly, ready to leap from the bed and tackle whatever challenges she threw at him. As if he was just a petulant child, and this just a tantrum.

He was locked in a room with a stranger who knew him, bewildered and dazed and frightened. He should have died.

He wished he was dead.

He slept instead.

* * *

He woke.

He was flat on his back again, and his jaw was aching. A lot of things were aching, if he was honest with himself, and the first thing he did with any sort of awareness was wince as he registered the pain. Had it hurt this much the first time, the accident on Korriban so long ago? Probably. Those days were a blur in his memory, full of rage and agony and hate and panic.

But he’d still had Thexan with him, so he hadn’t been ready to give up yet. Not quite yet.

Now Thexan was five years gone and he was alone in a vastly hostile galaxy. A bed of his own making twice over.

There was movement off to his left, his bad side, and with some difficulty he turned his head towards it. His head was aching, and it made it harder than normal to make out details with his left eye, but with his right eye to contribute to the process, he was able to see Kol’aya with her back to him, apparently in the process of folding up a cot bed by the far wall. She was wearing pants, but not a shirt, and his eyes widened as he sluggishly realised that.

She was far more muscular than the medical coat implied, the movement of the muscles beneath the golden skin almost hypnotic; like her thighs, her back had swirling dotted patterns dancing over it, like waves on a river, matching the spots on her lekku. It was utterly mesmerising.

He must have made a noise, because she glanced over her shoulder and smiled faintly, apparently unsurprised to see him awake. “Good morning,” she said, sliding the neatly folded bed under a nearby cabinet. “How are you feeling?”

It seemed foolish of him to state the obvious, but he could no more have stopped himself from blurting it out than he could have gotten up off the bed and danced a jig. “You aren’t dressed.”

Her eyes crinkled with merriment. “A stirling observation, your Majesty,” she said, her accent thicker this morning. “I will rectify that in a moment- you woke earlier than I was ready for.”

She climbed gracefully to her feet, her lekku hanging down so far that they brushed against the top of her pants. “You aren’t dressed,” he said again, somewhat hollowly. The small of her back was a delightful curve, one of his most favoured places to linger on his paramours.

“Curious that it should cause you distress, your Majesty,” she continued, “especially for the fact that you have not objected to my use of your title.”

“ _Why_ aren’t you dressed?” he said. He really should look away. The spots on her back disappeared below the top of her pants. He wondered where they ended.

“I was in the process of it,” she said. Even as she said it, she pulled a rather sensible looking bundle of fabric from the cabinet before her, something that seemed surprisingly reserved given her clothing choices these last few days. With it came flashes of memory, more details out of order. A stage, a spotlight, an award. Something about moral relativism? “I’m surprised you felt the need to comment on it, actually. The gossip of the holonet these last few years leads one to believe you are more than familiar with nudity.”

He finally blinked, as she tugged the shirt on over her head. “I... what?”

She pulled her lekku up out of the neck of the shirt one by one before turning back to him. The fabric was plain and unembellished, unlike the more flamboyant outfits he had seen her in. She looked practical. “Sex, your Majesty,” she said matter-of-factly, her topic of conversation muting any sensibility her outfit imparted. “Your exploits are rather infamous. I wouldn’t have thought you to be modest about casual nudity.”

He kept his eyes very pointedly on her face, not looking down. “You know _nothing_ about me.”

Her smile was far too knowing for him to feel comfortable. “Clearly,” she said, as if that explained everything. She put her hands on her hips. “But, enough of that- how are you feeling this morning?”

He looked past her to where the small bed had vanished. “You sleep here?” he asked incredulously. Anything to drag his thoughts away from the patterns on her back and the matter-of-fact way she said _sex_ with a broad smile on her face.

“Of course. Both for your safety, and your health.”

“You mean you can’t leave a prisoner unattended.”

She cocked her head to the side, one lekku slipping over her shoulder. “You are not a prisoner, Master Tirall,” she said. “Not exactly.”

“Then I suppose I can just walk out the door without any objections?” He sat up, and went to swing his legs over the side of the bed, and very abruptly realised what a bad idea that was when the whole room spun around him and he slid forward without control.

Kol’aya apparently either expected such behaviour from him, or was used to it from other patients, because she stepped into his space immediately and caught him before he hit the floor; the strength he’d observed in her shoulders when she’d been undressed was evident in full as she kept him steady with ease, settling him back to sit on the edge of the bed. She seemed utterly amused by him, if anything. “Easy there, your Majesty,” she said, her hands gentle but firm. “We’re not really up to running anywhere yet, okay?”

Even the brief attempt left him dizzy and breathless, his legs trembling violently from the effort. “What is-” He swallowed. “What is wrong with me?”

“Mm?”

“Why can’t I walk?” he said, his voice starting to verge on hysterical. “What have you done to me?”

She shook her head, smiling. “Master Tirall,” she said gently, “you have been in a poor state of health for a very long time now. Prolonged periods of illness or injury will always have a strain on the body.”

He felt like he was full of air, not blood and bone and flesh, and when he looked down at himself, he cried out in alarm at the all but wasted physique he encountered. “This- I- this isn’t my body!”

Her hands were very firm where she held him up against the bed, one on his good shoulder and the other on his knee. “Not the manner in which I would have liked to reacquaint you with your physical self and limitations, but that hardly matters now.” She eased him back into a seated position and adjusted the bed to remain in an upright manner for him, hands hovering for a moment to make sure he wasn’t about to topple face first onto the floor, before she went back to the desk, fetching up the medscanner and returning to his side. “How do you feel?” she asked, running it over him.

He blinked at the bright light shining at his eyes, and snarled. “How do you _think_ I feel?”

“Master Tirall, I would not wish to guess- it’s imprecise science, and makes for a poor physician. That’s why I asked you to give me the answer.”

He twisted and tried to pull away from her grip. “Stop _touching_ me!”

She let go immediately, leaving her hands flat in the air where he could see them, and not making any further movement towards him. “Master Tirall,” she began patiently, but he wasn’t having any of it.

“No! I refuse to be your damned prisoner! Stop _touching_ me, and leave me alone!”

Something like steel came into her eyes, and she lowered her hands. “You are not in a position to make fucking demands, your _Majesty_ ,” she said, and for the first time his title was a mockery on her lips, not an honorific. “That you are alive at all right now is due to the compassion and kindness of those who have your best interests at heart- despite all efforts on your part to stamp out any reason for compassion or kindness in the first place.”

“I don’t care about anyone’s compassion!”

“You are alive because of their compassion-”

“I don’t deserve it!”

The admission was out before he could stop himself, and from the surprised look on her face, she wasn’t expecting it from him anymore than he was. Something in her eyes shifted, and gentled, and she sighed in exasperation; he could almost hear her counting to ten in her head. “Master Tirall,” she tried again, and this time he didn’t interrupt her. “I am sorry that this is unpleasant for you- and believe me, it’s not really ideal for me, either- but please believe me when I say I am only doing this to help you. I know you’re confused, and you’re hurting, and you’re frightened, so I know it’s a lot to ask. But I need you to trust me.”

He probably should have been more concerned about the fact that he was sitting completely naked before her, but she hadn’t even looked at him once. “Who are you?” he asked finally, his voice a little rough from his outburst a moment earlier.

Something flickered through her eyes. “I already told you my name,” she said evasively.

“Yes, but you know me. Or I know you, I think. How?”

Her lips thinned as she pressed them together unhappily. Not friends, then. “You saved my life,” she said quietly, and nothing she said could possibly have been more stunning than that. It knocked the breath from him, a staggering confession that seemed almost impossible to consider. He knew what kind of man he had been, the life he had embraced these last five or six years, and saving people was not the action he associated with that man. “It only seemed fair that I repay the favour.”

Arcann stared at her, but there was no trace of dishonesty or deception in her face. If anything, she simply looked uncomfortable.

It was a feeling he was well acquainted with.

He swallowed. “When did... I mean, how long ago did I...?”

“Save me, or end up in this mess?”

“I’ll take it they weren’t the same event, then.”

She chuckled, the sound a little dark. “Still waiting for those memories to come back,” she said. “It was several months ago, our... _thing_. Your confrontation with Tahrin in the Bakura Sector was about five weeks ago.”

He closed his eyes. “Five?” he said hoarsely. He’d lost an entire month?

“Indeed. All things considered, you have made remarkable recovery in the time you’ve had.”

He opened his eyes again, and stared at her scathingly. “I am literally half my size,” he said flatly. “How is _that_ a remarkable recovery?”

If anything, she only looked amused. “For the last month you have not taken part in any exercise, you have not eaten regular meals, nor have you spent any significant amount of time in any position other than supine- it is completely natural for your body to have lost mass as a result of inactivity, and without consistent nutrition.”

“Where is the rest of me?”

She did the last thing he was expecting from her- she burst out laughing. It completely changed her, her entire face brightening from within and her body language changing to one far more inviting and open. It jolted something within him, startling and bright and beautiful, and for the first time since he had awoken in this claustrophobic room with this bizarre woman, he smiled. He had no idea where he was and no idea what was going on, but her laughter was infectious and he smiled in return.

Eventually she gained control of herself, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes as she breathed heavily. “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry,” she said, still smiling so broadly that she seemed in danger of cracking her face open. “That was just- I really wasn’t expecting that, that was so fucking funny.”

It was the second time her more professional manner had slipped in front of him and she’d cussed, and something about it seemed far more familiar than the poised coolness of her doctorly persona. He wondered how he knew that.

“Woo,” she said, smoothing her hands down her shirt front. “Okay. Proper answer that isn’t cackling like a hyena- you’ve lost muscle mass from being in bed for a month without eating. That’s all. It’ll come back with regular exercise and food, I promise.”

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe they had been friends? Surely she wouldn’t be this comfortable and irreverent with someone she despised?

She picked up the medscanner again and wiggled it before him, and his mood immediately soured. “Now then,” she said, with far too much enthusiasm for what was sure to be an uncomfortable examination for both of them, “shall we continue where we left off?”

He could feel himself slipping further and further into a funk, but he could no more stop it than he could recall his memories of her. “You can do what you want,” he said, finally tugging the blanket out from under his hip and draping it over himself again. A man had to have a little pride, after all.

The smile on her face faded marginally, as if she was picking up on his sour mood. “Very well then,” she said briskly, all efficiency and solidness. “I’m going to take a leap of logic here and assume that you don’t really have a great deal of understanding about what goes on with your arm, and how your prosthetic works, yes?”

He felt a bloom of shame in his belly at the realisation that no, he really didn’t know anything about this thing attached to his body, really. How easy would it have been for his rivals and his enemies to sabotage him using his own body? Clearly, he should have been paying far more attention to the whole endeavour a long time ago, and revealing his ignorance now only exposed what a prideful idiot he was.

With silence as his answer, Kol’aya waited for a few long moments before determining that he wasn’t going to speak again. He could feel the frustration starting to bleed off of her, and it frustrated him that he was putting her in a bad mood, but being angry at himself just set off the whole damned cycle all over again and dragged him further into his own head. “Alright,” she said, making an admirable effort to ignore his sullen waspishness, “since we’ve determined that your previous medical team did not keep you suitably informed during the duration of your recovery, we’re going to cover it all now, starting with this basics.”

“Why?” he asked churlishly, determined to sulk no matter what.

“Because, Master Tirall, it is in your best interest to remain informed and aware of the needs of your body, so that you can adequately consent to future medical procedures. You cannot consent if you have no idea what you are consenting to.”

“My medics have a duty of care, and have taken oaths to uphold the needs of the patient no matter what they do. Or are your doctors so primitive in their methods that they have no hippocratic oath?”

She looked amused. “Are yours so untrustworthy that they must be bound by oath to simply practice their craft without bias or bigotry?”

He had no answer to that, so he looked away.

“Moving on,” she said, still amused. “As I said before, your previous prosthesis was rather a disaster. From a technological viewpoint, it was an excellent piece of machinery, but nothing about it was optimized for your usage or comfort.”

He gritted his teeth. “It was not supposed to be comfortable,” he said sullenly.

“That was rather apparent,” she said. She had her hand on his shoulder, and she reached down and took him by the forearm, lifting his hand up for inspection. “Your previous prosthesis, as I understand it, was taken from a dismantled skytrooper. Terrible idea, absolutely terrible.”

He didn’t know why he felt ashamed of that, but he did. “It’s not like I had a surplus of options at the time,” he snarled, glaring at her.

She didn’t even flinch at his temper, merely shrugging instead. “Your pride kept you from replacing the limb with a more appropriate one in all the years since, and the strain on your body has been immense.”

“And who are you to dictate to me-”

“I am one of the foremost experts on neurological surgery and cybernetics in the galaxy,” she said, flashing him a rather ruthless smile when he blinked in surprise. “In fact, your staff did try to poach me at one point, rather aggressively too.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they turned up to my home planet and told me that I would be returning with them to Zakuul. Their means of negotiation was a squad of skytroopers.”

She said it so frankly, like she wasn’t just admitting to having been openly threatened with violence to force her to serve him. And yet here she was, seeing to his recovery, as if it wasn’t a bother to her at all. Was that how he knew her, from a forced abduction attempt?

What was _wrong_ with her?

“If you are done with your incessant outbursts, your Majesty, I can continue with my explanations.”

He let his head fall back against the raised bed, the fight going out of him. “I don’t care.”

He heard her fight back a sigh. “Very well,” she said. “Now, a prosthesis is most effective when it has been crafted specifically for an individual. It takes into account the movement of your body, the very unique structure of your muscular and skeletal frame, and the limitations imposed by the original injury. You cannot simply take a limb built for another person or droid and assume you will gain optimal use from it.”

He closed his eyes. “It worked well enough for me.”

“It was adequate, your Majesty-”

“ _Please_ stop calling me that.”

She paused. “I apologise, Master Tirall,” she said. “Now, your original prosthesis was a great deal heavier than your arm would have been, which resulted in increased strain on the left side of your torso to support the weight. This in turn has affected your posture, and has basically contributed to an immense number of secondary sites of inflammation that were not part of the primary injury.” Her hand drifted up his shoulder to his neck, her fingers making his skin break out in shivers. “Most noticeably, through your neck, which has of course led to your ongoing headaches.”

“It’s just stress,” he said, eyes still closed. He didn’t want to look at her. “I had a lot of stress in my life.”

“Possibly exacerbated by constantly being in pain, hmm?” He hated how smug she sounded. “In addition to your prosthesis being too heavy, it was also the wrong shape for your frame. A prosthesis should be as unique as the person using it, for optimal health and efficiency- with a good, custom designed prosthesis, you should have as close to the same quality of life to prior to the accident as is possible, and that was definitely not your situation. The arm was several centimetres too long, compared to your right arm, and the additional bulk in the shoulder was causing excruciating strain on your clavicle, to the point where there was evidence of repeated, long term hairline fractures along the bone.”

It all sounded so horrifying. Was that really what he’d been living with all this time? “Any other complete and utter failures regarding my personal health I should be aware of? Anything else you want to mock me about?”

Her fingers smoothed down to his shoulder again, the gesture at once comforting and distancing. “I am not mocking you, Master Tirall,” she said, gentler this time. “It’s important for you to know what has been done to your body, so that you can understand any future decisions regarding your health.”

“Why? It’s not like I understand any of it. Just do what has to be done, and be done with it.”

He felt her fingers under his chin, and his eyes snapped open; she turned him to face her, her expression somewhat severe. “That shitty attitude is what got you into this position in the first place,” she said pointedly. “If you are to make use of my services, you will make use of the breadth of my skills and knowledge, not just what suits you.”

Some old part of him, old and bitter and nasty, bubbled up and out before he could stop himself. “I’m sure there are _skills_ you have that could interest me,” he said, leering at her very deliberately.

He expected her to slap him, to screech at him shrilly and declare him vile and awful and intolerable. Instead her lips pursed slightly, as if in annoyance, and she pinched his shoulder. It sent a stabbing bolt of pain down into his neck, and he yelped loudly, his good hand flying up as if to bat her away; she’d already removed her hand. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt precisely once, Arcann, but if you attempt to start this childish bullshit up yet again, I will leave you naked in the middle of the Promenade. I have no interest in playing your stupid fucking mind games. I am here to see to your recovery, not pander to your planet sized ego and indulge your juvenile attempts at sexual intimidation.”

He stared at her, hugging his arm to himself with his mouth hanging open. He had... he had _never_ had _anyone_ talk back to him like that before, _ever_ , and he- he didn’t...

She had. She had spoken back to him like this before.

She was the only one who ever had.

She raised her tattooed eyebrows at him. “I see apologies are as foreign to you as manners in general,” she said curtly. When she reached for his arm again, he almost fought her, but at a single look from her he meekly complied; so much for the terrifying wrath of the Immortal Emperor now. She turned his arm so that his palm was facing up, and he realised he could feel each touch she made against the exoskeleton- not in the same way that he would have noticed a touch on his flesh and blood arm, but there was definitely an acknowledgement in his brain that there was pressure on the arm, that it was making contact with something and being restrained to an extent. “Now-”

“I can feel it,” he blurted out. “When you- I can feel it. When you touch the arm.”

The expression in her eyes softened marginally, not necessarily towards kindness, but certainly more comfortable. “Your previous implants were not designed to process or transfer tactile sensations,” she said. She very deliberately ran a finger up the inside of the forearm, and his body responded with a shiver. “These ones do.”

“How?”

She actually laughed. “I do not think you want the details of how we convince a mechanical device to emit data that can be interpreted as brain waves,” she said. “You don’t even want to let me talk about rehabilitative exercises.”

He glanced away almost guiltily. “Fine. Talk about it, I don’t care.”

Kol’aya sighed. “Surely it must be exhausting to be so incessantly emotional and petulant all the time,” she said, but before he could respond to that, she moved on. “Alright. The basics for you- the structure of the limb is made of a beskar-phrik alloy, with a titanium support pylon forming the base of the frame. The socket is-”

“Wait. Wait, wait, please.” He put his good hand up to his head. “Beskar? Phrik? Those are both extremely expensive, and rare. Who paid for this?”

Her expression faltered for a brief second, far more telling than anything she might have said. “That’s not relevant,” she said. “Now-”

“Why is it not relevant? Someone is paying for it, for me to have an arm made of two of the most expensive and durable metals in the galaxy. Who?”

Her look was withering. “Trust me, Master Tirall, durable is preferable when it comes to a prosthesis that will see high usage.”

He let out a sound of frustration. “That’s not the point, and you know it. Those metals can both withstand direct contact with a lightsaber blade, and there are only a handful of metallurgists who can craft a decent alloy from the two of them. Who is paying for all of this?”

She took his hand in hers and very pointedly set it back down on the bed, to stop him from gesticulating so widely. “Master Tirall,” she said, voice low, “trust me when I say that you are in no way ready to hear the answers to some questions.”

“Is it my mother?” She didn’t answer, so he pressed on. “Is it the Alliance?”

“I think we can leave it at that for today,” she said curtly, turning her back on him. “You don’t seem to be receptive to physical therapy, so perhaps you are in need of more rest.”

Her refusal to answer him was the most aggravating thing he’d ever encountered. Stubborn fucking woman! “I have slept for over a month,” he said pointedly.

“And I’m sure you’ll continue to sleep on an almost daily basis for the rest of your life, imagine that,” she said sarcastically, as she made her way over to the desk. “If you require food, I will fetch it. If you require a sedative for rest, I will-”

“I don’t need anything from _you_ ,” he snapped.

“Fine, then.”

“Fine!”

He stared at her, but she never looked up again, instead pretending to be engrossed in her work on the desk. After a time, he gave up hoping she’d look up so that he could glare at her, and instead looked down to the metal hand sitting in his lap. He poked at it with his other hand, and he felt the touch just as keenly as he had when she had done it to him.

A functioning arm. A lightweight, durable arm, specifically designed for his body, specifically designed to withstand lightsaber blows and to channel Force powers.

Who had paid for this? Who had insisted on this level of care and compassion for him?

It took him a long time to fall asleep again, the questions piling up in his mind the more he tried to ignore them.

* * *

She’d called him by name.

He gasped as he woke, half lurching into a sitting position; the room was dim, not quite dark, with the only lights coming from the desk where Kol’aya sat hard at work. She was half out of her chair at the sound of his distress, coming up to the side of the bed without hesitation. “Are you in pain?” she asked quietly, her eyes like two dark pools in the dim lighting of the room.

_This isn’t a trick_ , she’d yelled, hanging dangerously upside down from a burning, collapsing tower. Her hand outstretched towards him. _You saved my life, and now I’m saving yours!_

He swallowed heavily, trying to rein in his anxiety. “Asylum,” he said hoarsely, his throat dry.

She stopped dead, her hand outstretched towards him. Her eyes widened.

That was all the confirmation that he needed, and the swirling panic in his stomach seethed. He must have let out some sort of noise, because it prompted her back into action.

“Asylum,” she agreed, as she held up some kind of fluid container with a straw to his mouth; she helped him to drink from it, nothing judgemental in her eyes. When he let go of the straw, she set it back down on the shelf beside the bed. “Are you in pain?” she repeated. “Do you require a sedative?”

“Why are you helping me?” he rasped.

She scanned him in silence, and did something to the IV pump. “You should get some rest,” she said carefully, a somewhat foolish suggestion given how loud the music was from... wherever it was they were hiding. “Tomorrow morning, we’ll get you back on solid food, and start some basic exercises.”

What could he say to that? What could he say to her, at all? I’m sorry seemed vastly insignificant for the way he had treated her, and thank you seemed almost insulting for how much she had done for him.

He stared up at her, and she stared back.

“I don’t have much choice, do I,” he said.

She shrugged. “Not really.

He swallowed, his throat still sore even after the drink. “Very well,” he said.

She patted him on the shoulder, the gesture far too awkward for the intensity of his memories surrounding her. “Goodnight, Master Tirall.”

No more Arcann, then. He had lost the privilege of having her speak to him like an equal, it seemed. “Goodnight, Doctor Torr.”


	17. Chapter 17

She had to admit, she really wasn’t enjoying Arcann having his memories back.

His sullen misery and belligerence was bad enough by itself, constantly sneering and sulking and questioning her every attempt to help him. But to add into that his startled nerf-calf eyed horror from the night before, staring at her as if she was a creature out of his greatest and most wretched nightmares?

“Asylum,” he’d whispered, looking at her like he was expecting her to explode into a seething mass of flesh and terror.

Goddess, she wasn’t _that_ terrifying. She might’ve gotten the better of him on Asylum through sheer dumb luck and bravado, but that didn’t mean he had any reason to fear her. Surely he didn’t think that their encounter meant anything significant, right? Why would he be afraid of her, a man as powerful and violent as he was against a woman with just a sedative and a blaster?

... was that why he’d fallen from the control spar tower instead of taking her hand? Because he was afraid of her?

Her thoughts chased one another around and around in her head all night, and when her alarm buzzed in the morning to wake her, she was red-eyed and grouchy and irritable from not enough sleep. Thankfully Arcann was still fast asleep, undisturbed despite her tossing and turning throughout the night; she took the risk to shower quickly in the portable refresher they’d rigged at the end of the room, glancing out from behind the plastic tarp from time to time to make sure he wasn’t trying to sneak out while her attention was divided. He remained unmoving, and she rinsed off quickly, hoping in vain that the hot water would make her feel a little less like garbage.

It wasn’t really successful.

She dressed in silence and continued to glance over her shoulder at him, half expecting to find him awake and ogling her like he had the day before; the thought alone made her skin prickle with heat, scowling as she tugged her shirt on over her lekku. She’d thought at the time that there might have been some interest in his gaze, but clearly she was wrong if he was horrified by her. Not that she cared about whether he was interested or not, hah! What a fucking stupid notion, not only was it wildly unprofessional of her to encourage the attention of a patient, but it was _Arcann_. He’d tried to manipulate her and then murder her on Asylum- he was the tyrant who had held the galaxy in an iron grip for half a decade.

It was fucking stupid. Not that she was thinking about it.

Not at all.

She ran the scanner over him briefly on her way to the desk, making a note of his vitals and adjusting his drug and vitamin intake through the IV accordingly. He slept on, his chest rising and falling with a steady rhythm that was far more at ease than his first few days under her care. Her specialisation might have been cybernetics and neurological integration, but she was still a good enough doctor to ensure that his lungs had healed satisfactorily from the smoke damage; he had intensive scarring in his lungs and airways, further signs that his original injury had never been treated sufficiently, and it made her see red.

Was it medical negligence, perhaps even a malicious and ongoing sabotage, or were his staff truly so terrified of him that none were bold enough to insist upon a proper treatment regimen? While she suspected the latter, she couldn’t necessarily rule out the first.

And besides, every doctor and surgeon she’d ever worked with had an ego the size of a planet- she couldn’t imagine he was so terrifying that none of them would stand up to him. He was just a brat with magic powers.

Nothing she couldn’t handle.

There was a quiet buzz at the door, not enough to rouse him, and Kol’aya set her datapad down on the desk and carefully climbed to her feet. She absently checked the holoscreen before deactivating the lock, half-smiling to herself to see the silhouette of Mako bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet with her arms laden with stacked containers; the door slid open, and the grin on Mako’s face brightened to an outright beam.

“Morning!” she said in an exaggerated stage whisper, craning up on her toes to glance past her. “Is Sleeping Beauty up and about?”

Kol pulled a face and stepped aside for her to enter, gesturing to the stack of containers she was juggling. “Don’t jinx it,” she said dryly. “Did you need any help with those?”

Mako shook her head as she made her way over to the desk, carefully setting the tower down and beginning to separate them into smaller piles. “Your rations for the day, as requested,” she said. “Three containers of chicken noodle soup for our esteemed emperor, your breakfast eggs and plantains, your lunch sub, your spare lunch sub- not that I’m questioning why you need a second lunch, I get it- and your... I forget how to say it, but that black mushroom rice you love?”

“Diri djon djon,” Kol’aya said happily, lifting the lid on the container briefly to sniff at the heavenly scent within.

“Yeah, that. Your dinner rice. And your mega-cup caf,” she said, handing her the very large drink flask with the equally inviting smell wafting out. She was grinning slyly though, and she still had one hand behind her back. “And how much do you love me?”

Kol’aya cast her a droll look as she sipped at the caf, nearly sighing aloud at the burst of caffeine and sugar in her mouth. “That’s a loaded question,” she said.

“Well, you’re gonna love me more,” she said, pulling another drink flask out from behind her back. “They’re doing akasan breakfast shakes at Rojo’s again.”

She almost dropped the caf in her haste to grab at the new drink. The thick, spiced shake was like bliss in her mouth, and this time she did sigh. “Mako,” she said without a trace of irony, “I love you.”

Mako smirked. “I know,” she said, one hand on her hip as she posed dramatically. Unsurprisingly, her eyes drifted back towards the sleeping emperor, and Kol had to fight not to roll her eyes at the curiosity rolling off of her. “He looks a lot better.”

“Less crispy?” Kol said wryly, around the straw in her mouth.

She was pleased to hear the snort of laughter in response. “Well, there’s that,” she said, turning back to her. “He giving you any trouble?”

Kol shrugged. “No more than expected,” she said, and she wasn’t sure why it felt like a lie. He hadn’t really fought her, that much was true, but... something about it all seemed uneasy. Uncomfortable in a way she couldn’t really find words for. “He’s a spoilt shit, but I’ve dealt with spoilt shits before.”

“Alright,” Mako said dubiously, with a look that said she’d picked up on the lie that she wasn’t even clear on herself. “Holonet is buzzing with theories, and there’s so many bounties out- Izzy even got sent one on the Black List. So, you know, if any of this takes a bad turn...” She made a slashing motion across her throat, letting out a gurgling noise as her head lolled to the side. “We can make some money on it, at the very least.”

Scowling, Kol swatted her on the shoulder and steered her towards the door. “We are not killing him,” she said firmly. “I refuse to let all of my hard work go to waste- plus, I promised his mother.”

“Promises schmomises,” Mako said airily, but she didn’t object to being pushed towards the exit.

“Go make out with your Mando girlfriend,” Kol said, pushing her over the threshold and closing the door behind her.

There was a muffled _“She’s not my girlfriend yet!”_ from the other side of the door, and Kol shook her head with a wry smile. It faded as she turned back to the room, pausing with the shake halfway to her mouth as she found Arcann’s eyes open and staring intently in her direction.

Steeling herself, she adopted a more professional tone. “Good morning, your Majesty,” she said, making her way over to the bedside.

His eyes followed her the entire way, and he did not respond to her. Setting her shake down on the desk as she passed, she tried not to let her irritation at his silence take hold. “How are you feeling this morning?” she asked. “I have your breakfast for you, if you would like to try eating-”

“You should just let them kill me,” he said, his voice a husky rasp.

Kol closed her eyes and breathed out slowly, trying hard to ignore the way the irritation flared. “That is not an option,” she said, when she was confident she wasn’t going to snap at him. Opening her eyes again, she gestured to the bed. “Now, would you like me to adjust your bed so that you can attempt to eat your breakfast, or do you require assistance with urin-”

“I’m not an invalid,” he snapped, and his gaze fell away in embarrassment. “I used that... jug thing that you gave me, in the night.”

Indeed he had, and she’d cleared it away in the night once he’d fallen asleep again, alerted by the sensor she wore on her wrist that warned her of any excessive movement in her patient. “Very well,” she said, “breakfast then?”

He grunted in a non committal way, and she did her best to keep a bland expression on her face despite the mounting frustration within her. She’d hoped that he might start to be more responsive and engage with her more now that he was properly awake for lengthy periods, but it seemed her hopes were ill-founded. He was brattish, insufferable, ungrateful and sullen, and that was when he was in a _better_ mood.

“I’m just going to adjust the bed so that you can sit up,” she warned, pressing a few buttons on the frame to elevate the top half. There was a whirring sound as the gears spun and the bed slowly folded into a comfortable upright position, and Arcann kept his face turned away from her the entire time. “Is that at an angle you’re okay with?”

Again, he did not answer, and she chose to take his lack of response as confirmation- he certainly wasn’t howling in disapproval.

She fetched one of the disposable containers that Mako had delivered, peeling away the protective lid to expose the noodles and broth within. It smelled hearty, and it was certainly better fare than he might have received in a prison cell. “Here we are,” she said, placing it carefully on the bed tray and sliding it over his lap. He made no acknowledgement of it, so she continued to talk as if she had an attentive audience. “Chicken noodle soup, with reduced salt, and an infusion of protein and regenerative adrenals to encourage growth and recovery. In a few days, we can move you on to something more solid.”

She set out the cutlery for him, and then moved to unpack the other various foodstuffs that Mako had delivered, placing all of them into the small conservator beneath her main desk- with the one exception of her own breakfast, and the second sandwich that she’d included in the order. This she carefully unwrapped from the protective packaging, and set it on the front of her desk, as if she was intending to eat it shortly and wanted it at the ready.

Arcann made no move throughout this, sitting silently in the bed with the broth steaming gently in front of him. Kol’aya glanced casually at him as she slid into the seat at her desk, pulling her own breakfast in front of her as she set about reading through her scans from earlier.

Silence reigned for several long minutes. She ate her eggs in the quiet, taking solace in the occasional burst of sweetness from the fried plantains.

Finally, just as expected, she heard a contemptuous grunt.

She looked up to find Arcann staring at the bowl of broth and noodles, his lip just barely curled with disdain. “Salty water,” he said flatly. “How delightful.”

She continued working at her desk, hiding her smirk as she looked away. “As I’ve already told you, Master Tirall, you have not eaten solid food in over a month,” she said patiently. “Your body will not respond well to any attempts to eat anything more substantial than those noodles for the first few days, and even that will probably be a struggle.”

“I feel fine.”

“Be that as it may, you cannot process heavier foods right now.”

He did not answer, but after a moment, she could feel his gaze move over to her. She kept working, her stylus gliding over the screen of her personal database as she compiled data flowing in from the transmitters in his implants. She didn’t look up, or acknowledge his stare, and after a moment she felt it move on.

To the sandwich sitting untouched on the edge of the desk closest to him.

She heard him grunt, and she looked up in time to see him swing his legs over the side of the bed awkwardly, his face going pale as his knees wobbled beneath him. “Master Tirall,” she said warningly, but she didn’t get up to intercept him.

He threw her a withering glance, and drew himself up, straightening his shoulders with a wince. He seemed not to care about his nudity, and despite the worryingly white sheen to his skin, he took the few hobbling steps between the bed and the desk and picked up the sandwich.

Kol’aya sat back slowly, crossing her arms. “Master Tirall,” she said again, but she made no move to stop him.

He very pointedly raised it to his mouth and took a large bite. A smattering of crumbs fell back down onto the desktop, and when he pulled it away from his face, chewing slowly, there was a small smear of sauce on his lower lip.

She watched him eat in silence, and he defiantly took another bite, and then another, and-

And then he paused.

Kol’aya reached under the desk and pulled out the biohazard tub that she’d prepared earlier, offering it out to him.

He staggered, dropping the sandwich as he lurched to grab the tub; he wretched loudly and painfully, heaving the few mouthfuls he’d managed back up again and into the container. Having expected that from the beginning, Kol’aya climbed to her feet and moved around the desk, coming up beside him and putting an arm around his waist to help support his weight as he bent almost double over the tub, gagging and gurgling.

“I hope next time you will just take me at my word,” she said mildly.

He choked on a breath. “You did this deliberately,” he managed to force out.

“Incorrect,” she said, “I simply knew you would not listen to me, so I wanted to give you an opportunity to learn for yourself.”

He didn’t respond, but he seemed to have stopped the worst of the vomiting, breathing shakily over the tub instead. She carefully peeled it out of his grasp and offered him the flask of water from the night before. He rinsed his mouth and spat into the tub, before taking a longer drink. “You think you know me,” he said hoarsely, “but you don’t.”

She grimaced out of his line of sight. “I think I know enough to get by,” she said. “Now, are you interested in the salty water, or shall we take a break before we try eating again?”

* * *

_Alliance Private Tenements Sector, Odessen, Wild Space_

There was a knock at the door to their apartment, and Ona’la glanced up in time to see Thexan tense at the sound. She finished setting out the napkins on the caf table and straightened slowly, smoothing her hands down the front of her dress as she did so to ease away the wrinkles. Thexan jumped slightly when she came up beside him, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek as she did.

“It’s going to be alright, freykaa,” she said quietly, smiling earnestly at him to impart her confidence to him. He returned the smile, but the anxiety remained in his eyes.

“We’ll see,” he said, running his fingers down her arm as he turned and went towards the door; Ona’la watched him go with a fond sort of anxiousness of her own, completely confident in her husband’s abilities but worried about the stress he caused himself. She wished there was an easier way to support him, something that would impart even a fraction of the faith she had in him to him, but all she could do was stand at the ready with a smile and a kiss and a supportive word.

She could hear him at the front door greeting their guests, and she checked over the layout of the table one last time; it wasn’t a formal meal, just like this wasn’t a formal meeting, and she had entrusted Thexan with the food preparation since he had needed the distraction and he was far and away a better cook than she was. Maybe it was just the twi’lek talking, but food was food, and she’d never really grasped the nuance of some foods being fancier than others.

Satisfied with the arrangement of nibbles and the placement of the glowstones for ambience, she made her way into the nursery to check on the girls. She held her breath as she entered, praying to the goddess that she wouldn’t find Anya naked or covered in paint or her dress torn to shreds; thankfully, Anya and Jaelin were seated at their playtable in the corner, and Anya was very loftily explaining to her sister how certain blocks simply had to be placed together as they built their very... well, she wasn’t quite sure what it was they were building, but she was delighted to see their creative little hearts at work.

“Darlings,” she said, coming to stand over the table, “are you ready to meet our guests?”

Anya scrambled to her feet almost immediately, her formal skirts rucked up almost to her waist from where she’d been kneeling on her stool. “Yeah!” she crowed excitedly, doing some strange little dance that involved her bobbing up and down rapidly on the spot while she rubbed her hands on her knees. “Are they going to be my friends?”

She smiled warmly. “I’m sure they’d love to be your friends, eya,” she said, bending down to scoop up Jaelin. Her second born came without fuss, hooking her arms around her neck immediately and burying her face against her skin. Ona’la smoothed a hand down her back, rubbing gentle circles to soothe her.

“Do they know Uncle Arcann?” she asked, continuing to bob up and down as if she was simply incapable of remaining still for any length of time- something Ona’la had long become accustomed to.

Guiding Anya into the next room with practiced patience, Ona’la murmured “They might, eya, but remember what your Papa said?”

Anya let out an exaggerated sigh. “I can’t ask people about Uncle Arcann,” she said glumly, with a hint of petulance that threatened at rebellion.

“That’s right, we can’t ask. It’s to keep Uncle Arcann safe, remember?”

“But what if they know where he is?” she whined, climbing up onto the couch and crossing her arms grumpily as she thrust herself forcefully back against the cushions. It would’ve been adorable, if she hadn’t been threatening to expose their secret knowledge of Arcann’s survival- as of yet, while it was commonly accepted that Arcann had to have survived the Battle of Voss, so far no one had confirmed it. There were rumours flying across the galaxy, but Thexan and Ona’la had agreed not to speak of Anya’s vague connection to her uncle lest it expose her to those with a violent agenda.

They had sworn to one another years ago that they would give their children a normal childhood, far from the spotlight of royalty and infamy, far from the demands of the world of politics and war.

It broke her heart to acknowledge that that the world was beginning to creep in to her daughters' lives.

She settled Jaelin on her lap as she took a seat beside Anya, taking a deep breath as she listened to the low conversation in the hallway as Thexan conversed with their guests. Glancing at Anya, she reached across and carefully fixed her skirts for her, cupping her cheek for a moment and sharing a wink with her. “Come now, darling,” she said quietly, “you can’t make new friends with a frown.”

Thexan reentered the room at last, accompanied by three individuals, all with the striking physical features she had come to expect from Zakuulans. She had met all of them around the base prior to tonight, but seeing the three of them together beside her husband just drove home yet again the unique qualities of Zakuulan humans- the eerie metallic glow to their eyes, the way their skin seemed almost dusted with metal in some lighting, the exemplary physicality.

“Exarchs Tuul and Veere, Seeker Oramis, I believe you’ve all met my wife,” Thexan said with his hands clasped behind his back, his tone formal and cool, the nerves hidden behind a facade of steel. “Jedi Battlemaster Ona’la Tirall, for your pleasure.”

Ona’la smiled warmly at the three of them, hoping to smooth over Thexan’s coolness. “It’s a pleasure to have you both in our company this afternoon,” she said, in flawless Zakuulan. Raza Tuul’s eyebrows rose in interest at her choice of language, as if impressed, but Oramis seemed unmoved.

Thexan gestured almost curtly towards them, and Ona’la would have frowned at him if she didn’t know how very stressed he was, and how very telling the choppy motions of his body language were. “And if I might present our daughters, that’s Anya there on the couch and Jaelin sitting with her mother-”

He didn’t quite get to finish before both Exarch Tuul and Seeker Oramis fell to one knee, heads bowed as they kneeled before Anya. “Hail to the Immortal Empress-to-be, First of Her Name,” Oramis said, her voice uncomfortably hollow and distant, as if she spoke from some far off place.

Anya, for the first time in her life, looked too startled to speak. “Mama,” she said nervously, her little voice almost hysterically high as she climbed onto her knees and started to reach for her. Ona’la held out her arms immediately, drawing Anya onto her lap beside Jaelin.

Thexan did not take kindly to this interruption, snarling wordlessly as he grabbed Tuul by the shoulder and wrenched him violently upwards. “I told you not to say anything to my children,” he spat, pushing Tuul up against the nearby wall. Jaelin promptly started wailing and Ona’la hurried to calm her, hugging Anya and Jaelin both tight to her as she murmured gently to them.

“I will not disrespect the Immortal Empress,” Tuul said, his voice tight with repressed anger. “You might have renounced your own right to the throne, but she has not-”

“She _will_ not,” Oramis said, still kneeling before the couch with that same uncomfortable intensity in her eyes.

“And until such a time as she does, she deserves no part of this nonsense,” Exarch Veere said severely, standing over Oramis in a rather looming fashion. “She is a _child_. You are frightening her.”

“We are all of us mere children before the whims of destiny,” Oramis said.

“We agreed that we would not discuss this, Seeker.”

“Regardless of what you might have discussed or decided privately,” Ona’la said, her voice brisk and hard, the same voice she had used in countless arguments and confrontations with Senators and Sith and Sergeants throughout her years of service. She held Anya and Jaelin fiercely, her chin held high, “your choice of subject matter is highly inappropriate. Anya is _not_ your Empress.”

Exarch Veere pulled Oramis to her feet, and rather forcefully escorted her to a nearby chair, pressing her down by the shoulder whilst she remained standing. “You have my apologies, Master Tirall,” she said bluntly, then turned towards where Thexan still held Tuul against the wall. “Your Highness.”

Thexan stared at Tuul for a moment or two longer before shoving him roughly, sneering as he walked back to Ona’la’s side. When he sat down beside her on the couch, the expression on his face only softened when he glanced down at Anya, opening his arms to let her scramble across onto his lap. She remained uncharacteristically quiet, balling a fist up in the fabric of his shirt as she rested her head on his shoulder.

Tuul took his time to move, brushing down the wrinkles in his tunic where Thexan had grabbed him. Veere was the one to break the silence, sighing in irritation. “This is not the manner in which we had hoped to broach the subject,” she began.

“I agreed that there was a need to discuss Zakuul’s future and stability,” Thexan interrupted, “but now I am highly suspect of anything you might have to say, given that your first choice was apparently to terrorise my child.”

Anya burrowed further into his shirt.

Oramis leaned forward and helped herself to a single sliver of cheese from the platter on the small caf table between them. “We will not apologise for doing what must be done for the good of Zakuul,” she said.

“My daughter is not your saviour,” he said from between gritted teeth. “She is a child, and she will be allowed to have a childhood free from the pressure and the publicity and the expectations that was thrust upon me and my siblings.”

“Zakuul needs a Tirall to rule it,” Tuul tried to say, but Ona’la was having none of it.

“Perhaps Zakuul needs to step out of the shadow of the Tiralls for a time,” she said, adjusting her grip on Jaelin. “Valkorion’s influence still lingers, and it brings nothing but misery and suffering to Zakuul and its people. You need a fresh start.”

The Scion tilted her head to the side, nibbling carefully on the piece of cheese. “We have already seen the diverging paths of destiny,” she said, and Ona’la couldn’t tell if she was using we in the plural sense to refer to all of the surviving Scions on Odessen, or whether she was just being unnecessarily cryptic. “Empress Anya will bring the stability Zakuul requires, combining her compassion and innocence with the power of her bloodline to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity.”

Anya tugged on Thexan’s shirt. “Daddy,” she whispered loudly, “what’s a empress?”

He kissed the top of her head. “Nothing you need to worry yourself about, freykaa” he said firmly, casting a filthy look in Oramis’ direction. Ona’la didn’t miss the significance of him using a twi’leki term of endearment in an argument about their children’s Zakuulan heritage.

She tried once again to defuse the situation. “The people of Zakuul need the opportunity to govern themselves,” Ona’la said. “We cannot heal these wounds simply by instituting another unelected head of state. Zakuul needs to learn self sufficiency, both economically and politically, and they need to learn to think for themselves and not wait for their future to be chosen for them.”

“Yes,” Veere said, and the only indication that she was enthusiastic about the idea was the way she sat up straighter. Her tone was as flat as earlier, otherwise. “Exactly my thoughts on the matter.”

“There is no reason that the people of Zakuul cannot choose a Tirall as their future,” Tuul said sarcastically. “How long do you reasonably think Zakuul can survive with Vaylin on the throne? Our people will be devastated before the year is out, our empire in tatters and our cities crumbling around us. Will your refusal to acknowledge your place amongst your people really be worth the suffering your absence will cause?”

“My daughter does not deserve the pain of my father’s legacy,” Thexan started to say, and Oramis cut him off.

“And so a million other children of Zakuul must suffer in her stead?” she said. “You turn your face away from the suffering that grows daily, and pretend that your time in the spotlight is finished. You have the power to put an end to the darkness that sickens our home, and instead-”

“That’s enough,” Ona’la said coldly.

“And instead you cleave to your wife’s philosophies of pacifism and aloofness.”

At her side, she felt Thexan grow cold, and in her arms Jaelin whimpered. She had to take control of this situation, and quickly. “Anya, my darling,” she said, turning to where her firstborn still clung ferociously to her father, “would you be a good girl and take your sister back to the nursery with you? You can play with whatever you’d like until dinner.”

Anya slithered down to the ground with minimal assistance from Thexan, and very solemnly took Jaelin’s hand in hers when Ona’la set her on the ground beside her. “Can we paint?” she asked.

“Can you fill up the water cup by yourself?”

“I think so.”

“Then yes, of course. Come and get me if you have any problems, freykaa.”

No one spoke as the two little princesses toddled across the room, but all eyes followed them until the door to the nursery slid closed behind them. “Now then,” Ona’la said coolly, and in that moment she was every inch the Battlemaster, “let us discuss how my somehow inferior _pacifism_ saved the life of Prince Thexan, shall we?”

* * *

He had to admit, he really wasn’t enjoying having his memories back.

His paralyzing shame and misery at the events of the last few weeks was bad enough by itself, constantly having to brace himself against the storms of self loathing that threatened to overwhelm him. But to add into that the knowledge that the dark-eyed woman standing watch over his every humiliation was the one woman in the galaxy who had outwitted him, staring at him with cold judgement as if he was the most repulsive creature she had ever encountered?

“Asylum,” she’d confirmed, her mild tone not mild enough to hide the weight of anger and hatred such a word carried.

Scyva save him, he wasn’t _worth_ such a prolonged revenge. He might’ve been an asshole on Asylum, but he had treated so many more far worse than he had her. Surely she had to realise that their encounter was hardly significant, right? Why would she be so determined to pursue vengeance, that she would risk everything to rescue him just to keep him as her prisoner and continue the intimacy of his humiliation?

... was that why she’d reached for him from the control spar tower instead of fleeing to safety? Because she wanted to destroy him herself?

She insisted it was a favour to his mother, an obligation she could not deny, but he wasn’t an idiot. There was no bond so great that a person would agree to risk their life, their career, their _everything_ , just to save him in order to satisfy his mother. He was very much aware of his popularity- or lack thereof- in the greater galaxy, and the odds weighed against Doctor Torr were utterly insurmountable in taking him in out of the goodness of her heart.

It was a trap, or it was revenge. It was something sinister, he simply had to work out what exactly, and then recover his strength enough to overpower her and escape.

In the meantime, he just had to just grit his teeth and deal with the painful monotony and agonising humiliation that she insisted on subjecting him to every minute of his waking hours. Today was no different in that regard, having already suffered through the indignity of another bowl of bland broth and noodles while she continued to flaunt her own far more substantial breakfasts before him, knowing that she left them within reach as a test of his self control and his trust- hah! As if he trusted her. Quite the opposite, in fact. He would not fall prey to her wretched mind games a second time, not after embarrassing himself so thoroughly that first time when she had manipulated him into eating that sandwich.

It was pathetic. _He_ was pathetic. He hated every moment of this wretched endeavour, and not for the first time he wished that his mother had never come to save him; not because he didn’t deserve it, but because living was so very hard and he had only dealt with one person.

Izax forfend the day he needed to face the wrath of the galactic community.

After breakfast, they had gone through the humiliation of his bathing routine, but at least now he was able to bear his own weight without excessive exhaustion. The first few days- when Kol’aya had insisted on washing him as if he was a damned infant- were burned into his brain with the fires of mortification that would never truly abate. She still stood too close at hand, her dark brown eyes cutting and cruel as she surveyed the patheticness of his nudity, but at least he could be a man and wash his own damned body.

No one had ever looked at his body and found him wanting before- no one had ever dared. It was possibly the most excruciating experience imaginable.

“You’re not concentrating.”

He scowled, and glanced over his shoulder to where Kol’aya- or rather, Doctor Torr- sat at her main desk, her head bowed over her screens; one of her lekku had drooped forward over her shoulder, and had spilled onto the tabletop beside her like a coiled snake. “Why does it matter or not if I’m concentrating?” he said curtly.

Kol’aya didn’t look up. “Because, Master Tirall, I am currently taking a measurement of your hand-eye coordination, and if you stare off into space daydreaming about your fancy palace and your fancy ships-”

“They’re not my- I was not thinking about them,” he said, feeling heat rising in his cheeks.

“If you are not concentrating on the exercise I set you, then I am not getting the data I require to correctly program your implants,” she continued, as if he hadn’t spluttered in outrage halfway through her sentence. She looked up, and he felt as if she was cutting straight through him with her gaze. “Please continue as instructed.”

The urge to comply meekly was strong, but he still had the tatters of his pride to cling to, so instead of continuing to throw the small rubber ball back and forth against the wall, he crossed his arms. “I never had to do this sort of rancorshit with any of my other doctors,” he said, holding the little ball tight within his mechanical fingers. He could feel it pressing into the palm plate, and the fact that he could experience tactile sensations with this new arm was still mind-boggling to comprehend.

“Your other doctors _were_ rancorshit,” she said mildly, without breaking eye contact or flinching at all. “And frankly, you were a shitty patient- a habit I see you have no intention of breaking.”

The heat in his cheeks bloomed outwards, burning through his neck, and he looked away quickly, scowling heavily.

The sound of her chair squeaking broke the awkward silence, and he felt her presence at his side a moment later. When her fingers brushed over the outside of his mechanical arm, he sneered and tried to pull away. “I don’t need you to show me how to throw a ball,” he started to say, but she wasn’t having any of his tantrum.

She grasped his wrist firmly in one hand, the other on his shoulder as she held him in place. Her fingers were slender and slightly cool, but her grip was strong. “When we undertake even a simple action,” she said, patient but unbending, “a number of things occur within the body to make it possible. For example, something as simple as throwing a ball is actually anything but simple when you consider the fact that your brain must communicate with your muscles, and your nerves, and your eyes, all in order to coordinate the gesture where you throw and catch the ball- and all of it takes place without your knowledge, without your having to physically coordinate yourself and command each nerve and fibre to respond.”

Kol’aya turned his wrist over; he considered fighting her, resisting her incessant mockery, but he was so tired, and the touch of her fingers was increasingly distracting. He didn’t understand in the slightest how she made it possible for him to feel things against the metal frame of the arm, but he still didn’t know how he felt about it. It seemed too good to be true, too powerful. _She_ was too powerful. “Now,” she continued, drawing him back out of his thoughts, “consider how difficult that process is to enable with an artificial limb. Consider the fact that there must be a way to translate the electrical processes of your brain into mechanical, tangible instructions that a machine can respond to. Consider that there needs to be feedback, that the impulse to throw and catch must be converted from biological data to digital data and back to biological again.”

“And why, pray tell, do I need to know any of this?” he said, gritting his teeth against the shiver the danced down his spine as her fingers continued to move over his arm.

He couldn’t help the surprised gasp when her hand moved from his shoulder to the back of his neck, her finger almost pointedly drawing a line along the deep scar that stretched from his skull and down to between his shoulders. “Our brain thinks of an action,” she said, apparently utterly unconcerned with his sullen disinterest, “and it sends instructions to the different parts of our body to undertake that action- but for you, that means the microchips in your skull and your spine need to intercept those instructions and convert them.”

Her hand trailed over his shoulder- and he thanked every god in the pantheon that he was wearing a paltry hospital gown, so that he had some protection between her hand and his skin- and settled on his shoulder again. “The microcomputer in your shoulder socket receives those instructions, and your arm responds in the same manner that your other arm would.” Her other hand, still grasping his wrist, moved up to cover his hand. “And despite how _very good_ I am at my job, there is still quite a large margin of error in the programming of said computers, so in order to make sure your arm doesn’t try to punch you in the face, I need consistent data from it to make sure it is functioning correctly.”

Had she leaned closer, or had he? This close, he could smell her perfume again, just like on Asylum.

“So, Master Tirall,” she said, and her voice had dropped considerably, so much that he had to lean closer again, “keep throwing the fucking ball at the wall and catching it, or else I’ll turn the functionality in your arm off entirely.”

Arcann blinked, and she all but shoved him as she stepped back, leaving him confused and annoyed and vaguely aroused; the last horrified him, both because the last thing he needed was for her to have further fuel for his humiliation, and because, well... as if he was going to be aroused by _her_. Hah! She had gone out of her way to mock him and ensnare him and aggravate him at every turn. He might’ve been curious once upon a time, back before he’d been reduced to her prisoner, but now...

He’d never been bound to the whims of a powerful woman before. So far, he was not enjoying it.

Doctor Torr returned to her desk, waving a hand authoritatively over her shoulder. “Ball throwing. Starting now,” she said, and the lofty tone of her voice was enough to make him grit his teeth in increased irritation.

But he still found himself complying with her orders, petulantly turning back to the wall and throwing the ball unenthusiastically as instructed. For perhaps half a minute, there was nothing but the thud-thud-thwap of the ball bouncing off of the wall, to the floor, and then back to his hand; for a time, he almost lost himself in the rhythm of it, the rolling pace of the ball leaving his hand and returning to it. The swirling irritation and anxiety was not easily forgotten, however, and before long he found himself glancing over his shoulder at her.

He was annoyed that she wasn’t looking at him.

She pointed her stylus at him without moving her eyes up from her screen. “I didn’t tell you to stop,” she said.

He scowled. “I can just walk out of here, you know,” he said. “There’s nothing keeping me here.”

She raised her eyebrows, but she still didn’t look at him. “Mm, yes, I’m sure that would go splendidly for you,” she said, sarcasm dripping from her words. “Do you think you’d make it ten feet before someone jumped you for the bounty on your head, or twenty feet?”

“You say that as if you expect there to be a line of bloodthirsty mercenaries just queueing up outside the door,” he sneered, “which means that either you’ve informed them of where I am, or you’ve done a pisspoor job of concealing your tracks.”

“It doesn’t occur to you in the slightest that one does not have to be either a mercenary or bloodthirsty to want to remove a tyrant from power?” she asked archly.

The words cut through him with far more success than he might have hoped for. He looked away again, turning back to face the wall once more. “I am hardly still in power,” he muttered.

“You finally noticed. Perhaps you could stop with the petulant royal brat act, then.”

He felt his cheeks heat once again. “If you had spoken to me like that whilst I was on the throne, you would have been put to death,” he said.

To his surprise, despite the threat, she laughed. _Laughed_. “You already tried to kill me,” she said, almost incredulously. “Surely you hadn’t forgotten that part, right? On Asylum?”

He spun around back towards her. “I _saved_ you on Asylum,” he started to say, but she interrupted him.

“And that was immediately after you’d told me ‘ _no hard feelings, it’s just politics_ ’ and started to move towards me with your lightsaber.” She was looking at him now, and that cold indifference was gone at last; in its place was a searing anger, spitting and hissing and threatening to bubble over in an instance. She pushed her chair back and stood up, and he instinctively took a step back. “You were _absolutely_ going to kill me, _your Majesty_ , so don’t pretend like saving me was some great act of benevolence on your part, and don’t pretend like you petulantly reminding me about it is anything but an attempt to frighten and terrorise me.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth-”

She was right in front of him, and he backed up hastily until his shoulders hit the wall behind him; she followed him, stabbing a finger into his chest. “Fuck you,” she snarled. “How’s that for words in your mouth?”

Gods, she was _terrifying_. She was nothing! She didn’t have the Force, she wasn’t a warrior, he shouldn’t have been scared of her in the slightest, and yet...

Gods.

_Fuck._

What would Revan tell him to do right now?

He swallowed. “I-” _Fuck_. “I’m... _sorry_.”

The effect of those two small words on her was electric- her eyes widened, and her lips parted slightly as if on a silent gasp, and she immediately took a step back. “What did you say?” she asked, her tone breathy and incredulous.

Gods, of course she was going to make him repeat himself. “I said, I’m _sorry_ ,” he said from between gritted teeth.

Her mouth still hung open, but her eyes narrowed slowly; he didn’t like the look in them. “Sorry for _what?_ ”

 _Fuck_. “I’m...” He had _no_ idea what to say. “I’m sorry that you’re upset?”

The suspicion in her eyes immediately gave way to that cold sneer she wore so frequently, and she quite visibly rolled her eyes at him. She looked as if she were about to say something, staring at him so angrily that he could feel the vitriol rolling over him, but then she appeared to change her mind.

With nothing more than a disgusted grunt, she turned and walked back to her desk.

The silence that rose in the aftermath was tremendous and humiliating, and Arcann could feel the back of his neck burning. “Should I... do I keep doing the exercises-”

“Do whatever you fucking want, your Majesty,” she said coldly, not looking up from her screen. “Leave, for all I care.”

Damn it. He’d done the wrong thing. “Kol’aya,” he started to say, but she raised a single finger and he snapped his mouth shut.

“You will refer to me as Doctor Torr,” she said, and her voice was like ice.

He hovered there, unsure of what to do. Unsure if this was another test. He was frustrated and alone and miserable and ashamed and he couldn’t do anything about it.

In the end, he turned back around to face the wall, and stared the exercises again.

* * *

_The Spire, Zakuul, Wild Space_

There was a knock on the front door to her apartment suite, and Vaylin flinched despite herself. The sound seemed... judgemental, sneering, mocking, which was impossible because it was just a door knock, but why did it have to be so sharp and so cutting and so-

She tried to take a steadying breath, but it was so hard to breathe slowly. The air felt too thin, like she needed more of it in order to survive, but she couldn’t get enough of it no matter how quickly she sucked it into her lungs. The knock came again, and she felt real, tangible fear in her belly, wild and angry. She felt caged, she felt trapped, she felt-

The door opened, and she shrieked, hurling the closest item at hand- which turned out to be a cushion on the couch beside her. The figure stepping into the room was clocked rather soundly in the face, a muffled _‘oomph’_ coming from beneath the plump projectile. Her heart was in her throat, and she wasn’t sure if she was terrified or frenzied, but her skin felt like it was about to crack from the force of the emotions storming around inside her ribs.

She was half sitting and half out of the chair, one bare foot on the floor and one still on the couch where it had been tucked up underneath her. She wanted to run. She wanted to fight. She wanted to hide.

The pillow fell into the waiting hands of Exarch Vinn Atrius, who stared at her with the most bewildered expression on his face; some of his hair had come loose from the tie at the nape of his neck, and it hung over one eye. “Your Majesty?” he said hesitantly, hovering as if unsure whether to take a step into the room or not.

Hah. Of course he didn’t want to be in the room with her. No one did. “What are you doing here?” she snarled, except that it didn’t come out as a snarl at all, something more like a squeak. A whimper. A whine. _Pathetic_.

He reached up carefully and adjusted his hair, his movements never quick or threatening. “We missed you at the morning war table,” he said, his words just as slow and careful as his movements. “Your staff informed me that you had been... that you were indisposed. I was concerned for your wellbeing.”

“Why?”

Atrius paused, a flicker of confusion in his eyes. “Your Majesty, should I not be concerned for your wellbeing?”

She laughed bitterly. “It’s not like anyone else is,” she said, her voice far higher pitched than normal.

The way he looked at her made her feel strange, but she didn’t know what the feeling was. He walked carefully towards her, setting the cushion back down on the couch as he knelt before her; he was always kneeling, it seemed, and she didn’t know what to make of that. He was a lot taller than her, so she supposed she appreciated it in some ways. Didn’t want him looming over her like Father had.

He put a hand over hers, and she inhaled sharply, and only just resisted the urge to rip it out and away.

“You need not bear this burden alone, your Majesty,” he said quietly. “There are those of us who stand by you no matter what, ready to aid you in your hour of need.”

She did pull her hand away, tucking both under her arms as if to hug herself. “You have no idea what I need,” she said, thinking that would be the end of it.

Instead, he nodded solemnly. “Indeed,” he said. “I can only humbly offer my services and hope that you would honour me with your trust.”

Vaylin said nothing. She had no idea what to say to him, because as much as she longed desperately for someone to trust and depend upon, someone who understood that she was terribly broken and wretched, she didn’t know how to let him be that someone. That seemed like a terribly involved process that required her to be vulnerable around him, and to trust him wholeheartedly, and that never ever worked in her favour.

To trust someone was to let them hurt you. Arcann, Thexan, Mother. They all abandoned her, in the cruellest manner possible, each time as if determined to outdo one another in how deeply they hurt her.

Her staring silence must have unnerved him, because he broke eye contact with her. “Let me prove myself to you, your Majesty,” he said. “May I call you Vaylin?”

“No,” she said instantly, hunching in on herself as if wounded. “I mean, I don’t know. I don’t-”

“That’s alright,” he soothed immediately. “You need not explain yourself. You are the Immortal Empress, your word is beyond reproach.”

The words seemed like they were supposed to be mocking, but he said them so earnestly, his expression so... enraptured. He was a true believer, she realised with a sinking stomach, which she supposed made sense for him to have survived the Exarch program. He truly and fully believed in the power of the Eternal Throne, and by extension her.

She wondered if he gave a shit about who was on the throne at all, or if he was willing to chalk it up to divine providence that Arcann had fallen and she had risen to take his place.

“If it would ease your mind,” he said, and she realised he’d been speaking while she’d been lost in her own head, “I would happily relay to you the discussions that were had in the war room this morning.”

Vaylin hesitated. “I get a summary on my terminal,” she said, but she was so desperately lonely and so hungry for any sort of human contact, and at least Atrius had not ever cringed away from her in fear like the servants did. “But if you wanted to, I can’t really stop you.”

His brow crinkled in confusion. “Your Majesty?”

She waved a hand irritably. “Get on with it,” she snapped, trying to ignore the way her cheeks heated. She hadn’t meant to confuse him- why couldn’t he just understand what she meant? Arcann had never had a problem with the way she talked.

“Of course,” he said after his own moment of hesitation. He straightened his shoulders, but he remained kneeling before her. “The first point of discussion was the ongoing manhunt for your brother, and the possible leads being explored by our Knight-Hunters. We are continuing to pursue various avenues, but the search at this point is being confined to the Hutt territories and Outer Rim territories- we’ve ruled out the likelihood of the traitor having fled to the Sith or the Republic-”

“I don’t want to talk about Arcann,” she said, cutting him off.

Atrius paused again. “My apologies,” he said. “Our production factories are still in a hold pattern until we can source more secure lines of raw materials- we’ve repealed the embargo on new mining ventures, so we can hope to see more-”

Vaylin let her head fall forward, her hair slithering over her shoulder to cover her face. “I don’t care,” she said sullenly.

He was quiet for a long moment, and then he climbed to his feet; his grandiose armour clinked and creaked around his large frame, and she tried not to look at his feet retreating through the curtain of her hair. To her surprise, and her alarm, she did not hear the sound of the front door and instead heard his footsteps cross to the far end of the room. She could hear him moving about, opening drawers, and she resisted looking up by sheer willpower alone.

When she felt his hands against her head, she shrieked, jerking upright so quickly that she almost smashed his chin; she recoiled back against the couch, eyes wild and heart hammering against her ribs like a wild beast. Vinn stood before her with his hands raised immediately in surrender, and in his left hand he held-

She blinked. “What are you doing with my hairbrush?”

“I did not mean to startle you,” he said, “I simply thought that, perhaps, you might appreciate it if you had someone to tend to your needs. We need not discuss the morning war council any further, since it distresses you.”

She stared at him, trying to will her heart to stop trying to throttle her. She could feel it in her throat, and it made her nauseous. “Why would- what...” She swallowed, trying to swallow past the lump in her throat. “I don’t...”

He held up the hairbrush. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said softly. “I promise.”

Vaylin felt her lip quiver, and she hid it by ducking her head down. “Whatever,” she said, trying to ignore the matching wobble in her voice.

After a moment of silence, she heard him move again, stepping around the back of the couch; she tried not to flinch when he touched her again, eyes squeezed tightly shut as he began to slowly run the brush through her knotted, tangled hair. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d washed it- had to have been before Arcann vanished, at least. She hadn’t even showered in days.

For several long minutes, she sat quietly as he brushed out her disgusting hair; she tried to rouse enough pride to be ashamed of having him see her in this state, but she was too tired. Too tired and too used to having people turn their lip up in disgust at the poor broken princess and her inability to even care for herself. Everyone was disgusted with her. Everyone left her.

“There is no shame in struggle, your Majesty,” he said earnestly. His fingers were gentle as he carefully laced her hair together into a braid, and she hated herself for how much she enjoyed the sensation. “The duties of the Eternal Throne are immense, after all, and they hardly come to you in the most mundane of conditions.”

She giggled, the sound mildly hysterical- but the thought of calling Arcann mundane to his face was truly one of the greatest moments of the past few wretched weeks. She rubbed at her eyes, and she wasn’t sure if her face was sticky or if she was crying. It didn’t really matter. “How do you know how to braid?” she said, the words stilted and uncomfortable in her mouth.

“I have several younger sisters,” he said, letting the braid come to rest over her shoulder. Such a small thing, such a small aspect of her personal hygiene, but she already felt a little better. “I grew up helping my mother to care for them, and in the mornings before we left for the academy, that included making sure that their hair was pinned back appropriately for their classes.”

Had Arcann ever braided her hair for her? Had Thexan? She couldn’t remember. She didn’t think so.

She sniffed loudly, rubbing at her nose with the back of her hand. “Did the war council discuss the plans for the Horizon Guard?” she asked, hating how tentative her voice sounded. When she looked up, he was smiling at her.

“They did, Your Majesty.”

“You can call me Vaylin.”

* * *

“Did you want a bag for that, Mako hun?”

Juggling the drink holder one-handed while she let the food containers rest in the crook of her arm, Mako shook her head. “I got it, Cheena,” she said cheerfully, nodding a farewell with her chin. Expertly balancing the numerous hot beverages and assorted foodstuffs without burning herself, she turned to begin making her way through the crowded foodhall towards the door.

Except that she promptly bumped into someone, and let out a cry of dismay as she felt several of the containers go tumbling out of her grasp towards the floor. She couldn’t have grabbed for them even if she’d been empty handed, because the crowds were just too thick today- which was weird, it wasn’t like there was a Huttball game on, and there were no big concerts that she knew of. She had half a second to steel herself against the inevitable splatter of hot mess against her shins, but to her surprise, that moment never came.

The person she had bumped into swooped down and snatched them all up before they hit the ground and burst open, and Mako blinked in surprise. “Damn, that was a good catch!” she said, trying to shift the assortment in her arms so that she could take them back. “Don’t tell me, you’re a space wizard, no one moves that fast without-”

The woman straightened, and her golden eyes and her smile made Mako stumble to a halt.

Her smile widened. “Mako, darling,” she said, “it’s been so long!”

Mako smiled back reflexively, even as her brain scrambled to bring up a name. “It sure has,” she said awkwardly, reaching forward to take the containers back from her. “Listen, I really hate to cut and run, but I’ve-”

“You’ve got to get this food to where it’s going before it gets cold, I understand.” Her smile was so warm, so friendly, and Mako felt like she really needed to relax. Everything was going to be fine. “It seems like quite an armful, though- perhaps I can help you carry it?”

She’d said no to a bag a moment earlier, but that was before she’d just about dropped everything. The offer of help made a lot of sense. “I...” Wait, no, she wasn’t supposed to take anyone back to the room. Stars, what was she even thinking. “That’s kind of you to offer, um...” Why couldn’t she remember her name?

The woman winked at her. “I won’t tell if you won’t tell,” she said, and Mako relaxed again. It was easier when she didn’t have to juggle everything. “And you can tell me everything that’s been happening lately, I’d love to catch up on the gossip.”

“Sure!” Mako fell into step beside her, the two of them walking out of the foodhall and towards where she’d parked her speeder. “Oh man, when did we last catch up? I can’t even remember.”

On the woman’s forehead, two silver beads glistened in the neon lights of Nar Shaddaa, embedded in her head in the Zakuulan style. She smiled as she tucked her arm through Mako’s. “I’m sure it’ll come to you later,” she said with a smirk. “Now, where is it we’re heading with all this food?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since it's been approximately one million years, for anyone who needs the reminder- Exarch Raza Tuul was assigned to the Zakuulan embassy on Coruscant, and agreed to defect to the Alliance if Ellaz could bring him to Thexan. Exarch Esla Veere was previously the Exarch of Glee Anselm, and defected after making contact with Lana and Xolani's rebel network. Oramis is the Scion you meet on Iokath, but she's been with this story since Asylum.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for stomach injury and blood/bleeding. Also, because it's hilarious to me, please note that Arcann is wearing a hospital gown for a good 90% of this chapter.

The days had blurred together into an endless monotony of sleep, pain and humiliation. Arcann could not tell if he had been trapped in the room with Kol’aya for days or weeks or months or years- for all he knew, she never intended to let him leave, forever locked in the suffocating closeness of this makeshift hospital turned prison cell, always nagging at him to do her pointless exercises, always sneering at him with those cold, judgemental eyes. 

What had he ever seen in her worth obsessing over, honestly? Those erratic days back in the palace after Nox’s escape seemed more like a lucid dream now than reality, what with the paranoia and the lack of sleep and the obsessing over someone like Kol’aya Torr, an overbearing, egotistical shrew of a woman who couldn’t even maintain a professional facade around her single patient. If he’d known then what he knew now, that she couldn’t possibly be controlled by anyone in the galaxy, he would have realised that the idea of her being the Alliance’s prisoner was utterly ludicrous. 

And if he’d known then what he knew now, she never would’ve taken him by surprise in the first place on Asylum, because he never would’ve bothered to save her life. She was insufferable, arrogant, demeaning, vain-

“There’s only so much hot water in that tank, you know,” she called from the other side of the plastic tarp. 

He pulled a face in her direction, miming something very rude with his hands. 

“Be as childish as you want, that won’t change the fact that the water is going to go cold in a moment and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.” 

“You had a shower earlier this morning,” he snapped, but she was right. He could feel the temperature slowly dropping while he stood beneath the spray and sulked. How he missed being able to just sit beneath the water in his elegant refresher back home on Zakuul, to close his eyes and zone out for as long as he liked. Instead he had to deal with a tiny little hose with no water pressure, flimsy plastic walls that offered next to no privacy, and a nagging doctor watching him critically at every moment. 

“I did, and I kept it quick since I know you seem inclined to wallow,” she said, and once again he felt the heat of embarrassment creeping up his neck and into his cheeks. “You’re quite welcome to stay there in the cold, of course, but the tank will run out of water altogether soon-”

“Alright, alright,” he said, scarcely restraining himself from shouting. He slapped a hand sullenly at the control handle, and the water dribbled away to nothing; he didn’t want to admit to her that it had grown cold, just as she’d predicted, but he didn’t want to get out of the makeshift cubicle and subject himself to more of her humiliations. There was movement out of the corner of his eye, and he looked up to see her hand dangling over the top of the tarp, holding his towel out to him. He grimaced, but took it after a moment’s hesitation with a muttered “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, just as flatly and just as unconvincingly. 

Rubbing the cheap fabric over his face- gods, what he wouldn’t give for the silk sheets of home, for the plush bathroom linens that felt like a cloud against your skin- he glanced at her silhouette, annoyed by how at ease she seemed. “So, what’s the plan for today, Doctor?” he asked snidely. “Let me guess- more monotonous exercises, more bland soup? More declarations about how inferior my physicians were, and how lucky I am to have you?” 

“Have you been reading my schedule?” she said dryly, and for a moment, it almost felt like it could have been a joke between them, almost a moment of light-hearted brevity. But then it passed. “You forgot to include the time you regularly take each day to demean and frighten me, in the hopes of cowing me into submission.”

A burst of shame came with the embarrassment this time, as well as anger. “I also forgot to mention the numerous times every hour that you stop to call me stupid, and brattish, and to mock me,” he snapped, towelling off vigorously behind the tarp. It made the sensitive skin around his shoulder joint ache from his lack of care, but at this point he _didn’t_ care. 

“I wouldn’t call you brattish or stupid if you weren’t either of those things, Master Tirall.” 

He pulled aside the tarp jerkily, staring at her angrily while she stood at ease a few steps away, arms crossed and an unamused expression on her face; once again, she didn’t even seem to flinch at his nudity, and at this point her lack of interest in his body except to criticise it was driving his self-loathing and his body dysmorphia to new heights he could never have imagined previously. He felt like a thing to be ogled and critiqued, like an animal in a menagerie or a statue in a gallery. He felt repulsive and broken and hideous. 

Arcann sneered at her as he stomped over to the bed, his eyes unerringly turning towards the door as they always did in the mornings. There were no complicated locking mechanisms, nothing that could keep him out for long; if he wanted to, he could charge for freedom right now, burst out of this windowless cell and out into the world. Surely it couldn’t be that bad out there- surely there had to be enough people out there loyal to him that he could find safe passage and shelter, away from this madwoman and her needling words and jabbing fingers?

“You’ve been making good progress lately,” Kol’aya was saying as she moved behind him towards her desk. “It will take a long time to develop the sort of muscle strength you need to fully support the arm, but your body is coping quite well with the implants and all your secondary infections have cleared up.” 

He grunted. “What does that mean in the grand scheme of things?” he asked, tugging his ugly medical gown back on. Esne, what he wouldn’t give for actual clothes again. 

“It means we can start moving on to more complex exercises, including weight-bearing, and as much as I hate to say this, we can start doing some basic tests with your magic powers and how your implant copes with that sort of power surge.”

He rolled his eyes before turning back to her. “They are not magic powers,” he said, but she ignored him. 

“We can also start to look at cosmetic surgery options for your scars- not that I’ll be doing those procedures, but I certainly have people I can recommend for that- and we can discuss what options are available for optical and audio cybernetics, like cochlear implants and bionic eyes and what not.”

The self-loathing intensified, and he put a hand up to his cheek. “You think I need cosmetic surgery?” he said, and in that moment he knew without a doubt that she considered him a monster. 

She snorted, the sound vaguely amused. “I don’t think anything, really. Scar tissue- especially extensive scar tissue like your own- can be an ongoing risk for infection and excessive pain, especially around important joints like the neck and jaw where the tightness of the scarring can limit movement. It’s not absolutely medically necessary, but it is something to consider and weigh the risks against the benefits.”

 _And you’re disgusting to look at_ , his brain whispered. _A hideous, revolting creature_. 

The door buzzed quietly, a sign of her companion’s arrival with the day’s food. He’d had so many days of nothing but broth and noodles, even the mere thought of eating more was making his stomach recoil. The woman always stared at him curiously when she visited each morning, her expression far more cheerful and inviting than Kol’aya ever managed despite her offers to help kill him for the bounty money. 

He honestly didn’t know whether he should’ve been intimidated by that or not. Were there many people in the greater galaxy who were perky at the promise of murdering people?

He considered getting back into bed as Kol’aya crossed over to the door; as much as he hated to admit it, even the small act of showering was exhausting, and he really badly wanted to lie down. Turning down the blankets so that he could climb in, he glanced up as Kol’aya opened the door-

-and a wave of blaring alarms went off in his skull. 

The woman named Mako was standing there, her arms full of food as always and a smile on her face. Time seemed to slow down to a crawl, just as it had on Asylum- except that this time, he had no mask to scan for danger, he had no lightsaber to guard against attacks, he didn’t even have any goddamn _clothes_.

“Morning!” Mako said cheerfully. The warning grew, panicked and shrill, and he put a hand up to his head to steady himself against it. “I’ve brought a surprise!” 

Kol’aya had her back to him, but he could imagine the smile on her face from the sound of her voice. “Is it another akasan breakfast shake?” he heard her say. 

_Death_ , his instincts screamed at him, _danger!_

Another woman stepped into view behind Mako, tall and towering over her as she put her hands on her shoulders. He heard his heart beating in his ears, and he heard Kol’aya’s sharp intake of breath. Mako kept smiling, and only now did he realise how vacant her eyes seemed. 

“Good morning, your Majesty,” the woman said, her voice thick with a Zakuulan accent. 

Instinct took over- he was several feet away from the doorway, and had the benefit of a large piece of furniture between himself and the Knight-Hunter. Additionally, Kol’aya and Mako were in the assassin’s path, which would give him a few crucial seconds to prepare himself for her attack. She was a woman trained in the act of killing the most powerful individuals in the galaxy, trained to hunt like a relentless hound, and he was, well... he was an invalid. Even at the height of his power, a Knight-Hunter would have been a challenge for him. 

He thought Kol’aya might have yelled something, and it seemed like she was trying to reach for Mako; he reached out, reaching inwards with his power while his arm stretched out, and the Force swirled around her and wrenched her backwards. In the doorway, Mako collapsed as if in a dead faint, standing one moment and down the next, and the Knight-Hunter surged into the chamber, a maelstrom of lightning and energy crashing ahead of her. Kol’aya flew ahead of it, careening backwards through the air until she smashed into his waiting arms. He grabbed at her, turning in the same moment so that he could toss her one handed on the ground behind them; he winced at the wrenching weight on his mechanical arm and shoulder, trying to move as fluidly as possible but still feeling the strain as if his arm was about to tear itself away from his body. 

With his other hand, he drew on the Force and ripped the bed from the floor, steel bolts screeching in protest as he snapped the restraints; he threw it at the Knight-Hunter with every ounce of strength in his body, part shield and part projectile. He wasn’t surprised when he heard the hissing snarl of a lightsaber, and the golden blade sliced the bed in half as it flew through the air, each piece crashing down into different parts of the room as his assassin continued to move forward. The first went slamming into the corner where the refresher was, and there was a splattering explosion as the evaporation unit was punctured, spraying water everywhere.

The second came down directly on Kol’aya’s desks, her numerous desks and computers exploding in a shower of sparks; he grunted as he felt a corresponding electrical shock inside his shoulder, gritting his teeth at the unpleasant buzz of pain that continued even as the debris came to rest. 

The assassin kept coming, her golden eyes glowing with a fanatical gleam that matched her lightsaber, and he had to lunge and dodge to dart out of the way of her first strike; it was so close that he felt the burn on his skin, the hair on his arm singed. “I command you to lay down your arms!” he shouted, dancing around the puddle on the ground that now had a sparking power cable lying in it. 

“I do not take commands from traitors,” she snarled, spinning on her heel to kick him in the ribs. He staggered and went to one knee, wheezing as the air rushed from his lungs. 

It was going to be over so fast. Izax forfend, could he not even die on his feet? He was going to die on his knees like a coward, hiding in a secret room on some unnamed planet, far from anyone who might have cared about him. “Surely you have orders to take me in alive,” he said, trying to stall her long enough to get his feet under him again.

She paused over him, as if stopping to gloat, and he seized his chance. “The pieces of you will look just as good in a carbonite frame,” she said. 

And then she gasped, stumbling forward a step; Arcann glanced down, just to make sure that his mark had landed true. Protruding from the centre of her chest was a small, blood tipped shard of glass. The Knight-Hunter put her hand up to it, her fingers drawing away red as she studied it in surprise; she swayed on her feet, and her lightsaber clattered to the ground from an unresponsive hand. 

Her eyes were wide and afraid as she looked back at him. “Well played, your Majesty,” she whispered. “The others will find you now.”

And then she fell flat onto her face, and Arcann had to scramble backwards on his hands and knees to get out of her way; from out of her back, there was a much larger spear of broken glass, the remnants of Kol’aya’s destroyed computer banks. He’d pulled it from the wreckage with the Force, sent it plunging into her body when she’d stopped to mock him for his weakness. 

He only felt sorry for destroying Kol’aya’s work. 

For a few long seconds, everything was silent but for the occasional sparking of the destroyed medical equipment and the distant, throbbing music of the as yet unseen nightclub. And then, he started laughing, ruthless and half crazed, mildly hysterical and far too satisfied with himself as he surveyed the dead assassin lying at his feet. He laughed until his sides hurt- not a difficult endeavour, given how thoroughly his left arm and shoulder were aching already, the buzzing continuing unabated- and it was only when he felt the adrenalin start to bleed off, leaving him shaking and light-headed, that he sat up properly. 

“Vaylin insults me by sending such meagre numbers to hunt me,” he muttered, trying to convince himself that the encounter had been a rousing success rather than a terrifying brush with death. He climbed slowly to his feet, wincing when he tried to put weight on his mechanical arm. 

Gods, though, so much of the equipment was ruined; he felt more than a twinge of guilt as he eyed the smashed surgical supplies and cracked monitors. Maybe they'd assumed to still find him on his deathbed, and their instructions first and foremost had been to destroy the equipment keeping him alive. Maybe if he hadn’t thrown the damn bed, it wouldn’t have gone this badly.

No matter. The assassin had been destroyed, and he felt an inkling of his old strength again; he had to admit, his new arm had performed exceptionally, with none of the clumsiness he had suffered in the first few months after his first prosthesis had been installed. Had it not been for the destruction of the computer banks and the corresponding electrical shock he’d suffered, he might’ve gotten the better of her with more ease. He kept turning, frowning as he sought out Kol’aya in the mess. “They will send reinforcements soon now that they've found...”

He trailed to a horrified stop as he found her, standing against the far wall- slumped against it, really- with her hands held almost desperately to the side of her belly, just above her hip. Her face was ashen, and her hands were dripping with blood as she panted thinly. 

He stared. He knew he was staring and it was a useless waste of time, standing there with his mouth hanging open, but he was spellbound. Horrified. 

Her eyes were foggy with pain, and she closed them, swallowing heavily as her head tipped back against the wall. “Arcann,” she rasped, and the fact that it was his name and not his title was enough to knock him out of his daze. 

He stumbled over the wreckage of the room, almost slamming into her in his haste. “She didn’t hit you,” he said, dismayed and confused. “She was- I pulled you out of the way, I saved you, she shouldn’t have-”

“Arcann, you’re babbling,” she said, her expression tight with pain.

He swallowed down the panic. “What can I do?” 

“There is...” She seemed to falter for a moment, and the panic came back before she grunted and forced her eyes open. “There is still something in- in the wound. I- I have to get it out.”

He nodded, not having anything else to do. “Yes, yes, of course, we need to get it out, tell me what to do-”

“I’m going to fall over in a moment, so I need- I need to sit down somewhere.” She was slurring her words quite badly, stuttering and shivering. “Is there any-anything I can still sit on?”

Arcann spun back around, surveying the room quickly. “Your bed is fine,” he said as he spotted it poking out from beneath the cabinets, turning back just as she crumbled. He caught her, or rather she fell against him and he stopped her from hitting the floor, and a ball of something panicked and hysterical lodged in his throat. “Kol’aya?”

She didn’t answer, and the panic surged higher. He swung her up into his arms, the movement apparently enough to rouse her again, because she went almost painfully tense, and a strangled moan slid past her lips. He crossed the room in two long strides and managed to hook his foot around the frame of her fold-up bed, tugging it out from its’ hiding place; he eased her down onto the thin mattress as gently as possible, hands fluttering uselessly as he took in the blood all over both of them. It seemed like far too much blood for one person to have lost and still survived. “Kol’aya?” he repeated desperately. Gods above and below, he had no idea how to perform a medical procedure, but he couldn't... he couldn't just _leave_ her like this. 

She blinked, and the moan she let out, thin and reedy, cut right through him. “Is Mako okay?” she panted, eyes not quite focussed. 

He didn't exactly shudder in relief at her waking again, but it was close. “I don’t care about Mako-”

“ _I_ care about Mako,” she snapped, but hiccuped in pain immediately after. “ _Please_ , Arcann. She might- _fuck_ -”

He was already back on his feet, lunging across the room to the doorway where Mako had collapsed. She was lying exactly where she’d fallen, covered in rapidly congealing foodstuffs, and when he shook her, her eyes stayed closed. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hissed, bending down to check her for lifesigns. She was breathing easily, and her pulse was strong; the Knight-Hunter must have put a compulsion on her, and he wouldn’t be breaking through that any time soon. Kol’aya had to be his priority. 

He sprinted back to her side, panting as he tried to control his own rising panic. “She’s still unconscious,” he said. ‘What do I do?” 

She swallowed, clearly steeling herself. “There's a- a piece of shrapnel, in there. Have- have to get it out and...” She trailed off again, her expression going blank. 

Arcann panicked. “Kol’aya!”

She shook her head again, teeth gritted in pain and frustration. “I need an- an adrenal, or I won't stay awake.”

He nodded. “Where?”

“Top drawer, main desk.” He lunged away from her and over to the demolished desk, flipping it upright again with his cybernetic arm. He was shaking as he wrenched open the top drawer, wincing at the sight of so many broken vials and syringes; he grabbed the first one he could see that wasn’t cracked or smashed, and raced back to her side. She nodded when he held it up in query. “Good, good, just- just in my thigh.”

Arcann hesitated. “Through... um, _through_ your pants, or should-”

“You choose weird times to be chivalrous,” she rasped. With her left hand she tried to tear the fabric, but she clearly wasn’t strong enough; he prayed for forgiveness as he reached up and did it for her, ripping the leg of the pants open and exposing her thigh. Huh- the spots on her lekku were mirrored on her body too; the small, concentric black whorls were visible on her legs, appearing just above her knees before disappearing beneath the ragged fabric. He wondered how high up they went. “Less staring, more stabbing.” 

He felt his cheeks burning at the awkward callout, fumbling to inject the adrenal into her thigh and not get further distracted by how muscular and smooth it was. “Done,” he said, his voice shaking. 

She was gritting her teeth quite visibly, eyes squeezed tight closed, but she still nodded to him. “Good,” she said, patting awkwardly at her belly, “now come here.”

He obediently moved up the bed, not really sure what to do with his hands and not really sure what to do about anything. “What now?”

She swallowed painfully; her face was ashen, dusty and sickly in colour instead of bright and golden. “I need you to get the- the shrapnel out,” she said, voice shaking violently. She took his hand in hers, her fingers slick with blood, and guided him to the wound on her belly. “It’s too- too close to organs.”

He blinked, and then his eyes widened. “I- what? No! I can’t do that!”

Kol’aya’s eyes closed for a moment, frustration flashing in the dark brown depths. “I can’t m-move with this in m-me,” she said, her words coming out worse and worse now. “S-so we’ve got two choices, Arcann. You get this out of m-me, and we run before the next wave of your sister’s m-minions gets here, or you run and I stay here to keep them b-busy.” 

He stared at her in horror. “But you’ll _die_ ,” he said.

“Well, if that option is so abhorrent to you, you n-need to get this out of me, or we’re b-both going to die-”

“I can’t- I don’t know how to do... medical things!”

Somehow, despite the immense pain she had to be in, she rolled her eyes at him; she still had his fingers trapped in hers, and with her other hand she pulled up her shirt, exposing the wound. Surprisingly, it was a lot smaller than he’d assumed it would be, and the amount of blood coming out of it was even more distressing for how small it was. Something that small shouldn’t be responsible for so much blood. She pushed his fingers down against the skin, and a lump was very clearly defined beneath his hand. 

“See that?” she asked, eyes cloudy with pain as she tried to get him to look at her. When his fingers moved she cried out, and his heart lurched into his throat. “It’s n-not that d-deep, you need to get it out-”

“I don’t want to hurt you!”

“Well, then...” She trailed off, her eyes sliding closed again. She swallowed, clearly in pain. “On the far wall. The electrical power panel has a fake back.”

“What?”

“Your lightsaber is in there. You n-need to run before they come back.” 

He turned and looked over to where she had indicated, noting the small grey box on the wall. He looked back down at her. “Why?”

“Why what?” she snapped, exhausted and struggling immensely.

“Why would you do that for me? You don’t even like me, and if you don’t get help you’ll _die_ , either from the blood loss or the next round of assassins.”

Her smile was thin, her eyes tight closed. She didn’t answer him. 

The offer of freedom was tantalizing, he wasn’t going to deny that. He was vaguely healthy again, and with the exception of the damage caused just now in the fight, the arm she’d fitted him with was sublime; he could take the lightsaber and run now, and Vaylin’s Knight-Hunters and droids would never find him. He’d be free- or at least as free as someone as notorious as he was could ever be. 

But the next round of assassins would kill Kol’aya, this peculiar woman who did not cower from him or pamper him or let him have an inch of ground in any argument they had. This woman who helped him and healed him for no other reason than that someone had asked her to, to the point where she was willing to put her life on the line to hold true to her promise to them. His mother, she insisted in one conversation, and then Ysaine Pierce in another; they were far luckier than they realised to have the loyalty of such a woman. 

He found himself shaking his head. “No,” he said, a little light-headed. “No, I won’t go.” 

There was a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead, and her eyes were still closed. “You are...” She laughed shakily. “You are insufferable.”

He tore her shirt, giving him better access to the wound. “Shouldn't I be doing this with tweezers?” he asked, trying to carefully mop up the worst of the blood with his sleeve. It didn't really help, and when she moaned in pain he stopped abruptly. 

“If you can find them in the mess,” she said, panting rapidly, and he glanced over his shoulder at the ruins of the room. 

“Good point.”

“I always make good points.”

He laughed shakily too, more of a huff of panicked air. “Do you always try to win arguments no matter the circumstances?”

“I don't know, I've never met anyone who made me want to keep arguing like you- _gnngh_.” He didn't give her any warning when he dug his fingers into the wound, hoping at least it'd make it easier for her if she wasn't tensed in anticipation. 

It didn't help. 

She went rigid beneath his hands, her back arching off the bed for a brief moment before she got herself under control; the surprised grunt of pain became a wail, and she tried to keep it locked between clenched teeth to start with. The deeper his fingers pressed, scrabbling to grasp the slippery, jagged edges of the shrapnel, the more desperate her cries became. 

He pressed his cybernetic hand to her belly, trying to keep her from bucking too violently and knocking his fingers free. His pulse was pounding so loudly in his ears that he could feel it drumming, hammering around in his head like a machine. “I'm sorry,” he said hoarsely. 

She sobbed, her face turned away and her hands digging in ferociously to the bed. “Just- can't you-” Something he did was apparently not helpful, if the way she cried out abruptly was anything to go by. “Don't push it deeper!”

“I'm trying!”

The way she whimpered and bit her lip, her feet writhing while her torso stayed relatively still beneath his hands, was heartbreaking. He had to distract her, he had to make it easier than this. “You know,” he said, tugging as gently as possible on the largest piece of metal and shuddering with relief when he felt it slide free, “this isn't usually what I expect when people say they want me inside them.”

It worked- she laughed, somewhat hysterically, but she laughed. “I've never propositioned an emperor before,” she said, the moan cutting off halfway when he dug around for the next piece. When she gasped and started breathing again a second later, he realised he'd been holding his breath too. “I didn't know there was a script to follow.”

He fished out the second piece and tossed it aside, trying to shake off the excess blood on his fingers. “Did they not hand it out to the public after my inauguration?” he said, wincing when she cried out again when he pressed slightly on the wound. “Sorry.”

“Never watched it,” she said hoarsely, panting thinly. 

“I was joking, you know. I didn't really think-”

“I know,” she said. She put one hand up to her forehead, covering her eyes. “You shouldn't explain jokes, they stop being funny then.”

The piece he was trying to pull out slid out from between his pinched fingers, digging deeper into her body, and she all but screamed. She was sobbing, chest heaving, by the time he got it out, hands fluttering uselessly. “Sorry, sorry,” he babbled frantically. “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-”

“Is it out?”

“I-I think so, I couldn't feel anything else in there-”

“It’s okay,” she managed, sounding exhausted. She had a blood smear on her cheek from where she’d clearly gone to wipe her tears and thought better of it. “Few more steps. Almost there.” 

He was beginning to understand the expression _‘tear one’s hair out in frustration’_. “There’s _more?_ ”

She laughed once, the sound strained. “Is the Force not helping you with the healing?” 

“Are you literally making jokes while bleeding to death?” 

“Apparently,” she said hoarsely. She raised a shaking hand and pointed back towards the desk. “Either in the drawer, or in that cabinet, uh, you need, um...”

She trailed off, and her expression seemed dazed for a moment. “Kol?” he asked frantically. 

“Sorry,” she said, blinking up at him. “Um. The drawer. You need three things- anticeptin, coagulant and, um, dermal sealant.”

“I don’t know what any of those things are.” 

She tried to laugh, but it was just more of a breathy smile than anything. “Remember how I told you off for- for letting your medics do whatever they want to your body, without questioning what they’re doing?” She breathed thinly for a few seconds. “This is why.” 

He was glad she was somewhat out of it, because she wouldn’t likely remember the way he flushed with embarrassment. “What do they look like?”

“Tubes,” she said, clearly struggling. “They’re all gels. Just like... squeezy things.”

He started to step away from the bed, but paused at that. “Squeezy things?” he asked wryly.

She licked her lips, eyes drifting closed. “You try words when you’ve had someone else’s hands in you.”

“Again, you keep making these offers that I normally hear under different circumstances.” The drawer proved to be fruitless, and the cabinet was slightly dented from flying debris that had crushed the doors inwards. The lock had bent shut, and he tore it off with the strength of his cybernetic arm, tossing it aside; the contents of the cabinet had been violently thrown about, with most of it spilling out over his feet when he opened the doors. “ _Fuck_.”

“Maybe some other time,” she said hoarsely, and when he threw her a dirty look over his shoulder, she wasn’t even looking at him.

He crouched down in the mess, picking his way through the various bottles and tubes and looking for _‘squeezy’_ things as promised. He found the three she’d requested, one of which had burst open at the wrong end in the chaos, but he was about to use it all anyway, so it wasn’t like it was bad, right? 

“Which one first?” he asked, piling them on the bed next to her hip. Her eyes were still closed, and she didn’t answer immediately; he gritted his teeth and put his hand on her shoulder. “Kol’aya.”

She came awake with a start, grunting a little from the pain; she blinked as she tried to focus on him. “Arcann,” she said, almost in confusion. 

“I’m here,” he said earnestly. “What do I do?” 

“The, um...” She shivered. “The antiseptin, then the coagulant. Dermal sealant last.” 

He fumbled to grab the first one she’d indicated, the tube slippery with her blood, and when he managed to get the top off of it, he squeezed far too hard and left both of them covered in a large dollop of the gel. He made a noise of frustration, pointlessly trying to scoop it back up again. “Sorry, I’m sorry,” he began, but she waved a hand weakly.

“It’s alright,” she said hoarsely. “Some guys have problems with that sort of thing.” 

He paused for a moment, just to make sure he definitely hadn’t misheard her. “Do you always flirt incessantly and make bad sex jokes when you’re staring death in the face?” he asked, trying to ignore the fact that his cheeks were definitely hotter than they had been earlier as he smeared the gel over the wound. It roused a pained sob from her, and he gritted his teeth. 

“D-don’t know,” she stammered, shaking violently. “Never c-come face to face with death before.”

The words were out of his mouth before he could help himself. “Does he take you from behind, then?” he asked, and when she blinked at him, he could have slapped himself. “You- um. Because you said- I mean if, like, death was a person-”

She was shaking, and it took him a moment to realise it was because she was laughing- silently to begin with, but then a thin, reedy chuckle broke out of her, cut off a moment later by an agonised hiss as the movement presumably upset her wound. “I already told you to stop explaining your jokes,” she said, when she had her breath back again. She gasped again when he tried to apply the coagulant, the sound heart wrenching. 

“This is- should I be trying to get it, like... in the wound?” 

There were tears on her cheek, her breathing ragged and exhausted. “Near enough is g-good enough,” she said, her skin trembling under his hand. “Then the d-dermal sealant and we’re g-good.” 

Her eyes started to drift closed again, and he tried not to panic. “Kol’aya?”

She groaned, clearly at the end of her limits but still pushing on regardless. “Just...” She struggled, a crease between her brows as she paused for a long, painful moment. He began to worry that she’d passed out until she crinkled her nose. “Just get it d-done. Then you can go.” 

He was in the process of smearing the final layer of goo over her belly, but he paused at that. “Go?”

“You can get out,” she said faintly. “Before they come back.”

Arcann felt a spike of something hot and angry in his chest. “I’m not _going_ anywhere!” he snapped, setting the tubes aside rather forcefully; one of them burst open, gel going everywhere.

She smiled weakly, almost dreamily. “No one is expecting you to stay,” she said. 

His hands clenched at his sides. “You think I’m going to run off? Like a coward?” He was angry, and he was frustrated, and more than that it stung to think that she and these mysterious benefactors of hers seemed to think he was going to vanish at the first sign of trouble. 

Kol’aya didn’t answer, and he gritted his teeth. “Well?” 

When he stepped back up to the bed, poking her in the shoulder, she didn’t respond or react; glancing around awkwardly, almost guiltily, he put a hand under her chin and turned her to face him. She didn’t wake up, and the tension around her eyes from the pain was gone. 

Great. He’d shouted at an unconscious woman. 

He groaned in frustration, turning away from the bed and stalking the small confines of the room. The adrenlin from the fight and the impromptu surgery was bleeding out of him rapidly, leaving him shaky and worked up and on edge; the blood on his hands and his torso was growing sticky, and for a lack of anything else to do, he stomped over to the sole remaining basin on the wall. The others had been reduced to melted slag or torn from the wall in the violent confrontation with the Knight-Hunter, and he winced as he picked his way over the rubble and shards of shrapnel over the floor. 

Some of that very same shrapnel had nearly killed her. 

He slammed on the faucet with more force than was probably necessary, holding his hands under the spout and watching as the water flowing into the drain ran red with her blood. Her blood, spilled in the defence of him, a man she didn’t even know except for the history of his tyrannical reign. A man who had, as she very rightly pointed out so often, tried to kill her several months earlier on Asylum. Someone had asked her to save him, and she’d taken that request so fervently to heart that she’d almost died for it. 

For _him_. 

He closed his eyes, the guilt almost overwhelming him. People didn’t do things for him. That was just fact. People didn’t like him, and people didn’t trust him, and people certainly didn’t give their lives for him because of a genuine belief in him. Thexan- because he couldn’t bring himself to think on the imposter right now, not when he was so badly unbalanced already- had died for him. His mother, despite whatever foolish hope Kol’aya had given him with her promises, had to have died for him. Now she’d nearly died for him, or at least been prepared for it. 

She expected him to leave, to run off and abandon her. Her words rang hollowly in his ears- _no one expects you to stay_. 

It burned in him, the humiliation. Her words were well warranted, after all- he _did_ run away from his sister’s desperate cries during the confrontation with the Wrath, leaving her to the mercy of the Wrath’s alliance and the rebelling Eternal Fleet. He’d run from the battle against the Wrath in the first place, even if her desire to confront him had been nonlethal in the first place. 

His mother had given her life believing that there was something better within him. A better man, a flickering spark of potential for the person he might have been without his father’s abuse. 

_No one expects you to stay._

No one else saw that spark. No one else saw a man worthy of saving. 

He shook himself violently, scooping up handfuls of water and scrubbing aggressively at his belly and arms to get her blood off of him. _Her_ blood. She believed in _someone_ , but not him, and the thought made him bitterly jealous. Someone had asked her to save him, and she was so committed to them and to honouring her promise to them that she’d... who just _did_ that, anyway? Who just shrugged and willingly went and threw their life and safety aside for a relative stranger, and a dangerous one at that, just because someone asked them to? This was clearly no longer about revenge, if it ever even had been, because what satisfaction could she glean from his freedom and her death? 

How did one even craft such loyalty in the first place? His mother had died because she loved him, and she believed in him. Thexan had- Thexan had died, probably for similar reasons, but other than that? His soldiers died because they believed fanatically in the myths his father had woven, not because they had any personal connection to him. People didn't... like him. He knew that. He'd known that for a long time. 

He wondered if the person who held Kol’aya’s loyalty, whether it was Pierce or his mother, knew what a gift it was. 

She was still unconscious when he finally turned away from the sink, his skin pink from scrubbing and his shoulder finally starting to ache more sharply from the exertions of the last hour. Scyva save him, he hadn't even thought twice about carrying her to the bed- maybe he wasn't supposed to have put so much pressure on it so early? But what was he supposed to do, leave her on the ground?

His neck was hurting too, probably from the same strain; it hadn't helped at all that her wound was on the right, which meant that standing beside her had left him with his bad side facing her. He'd clearly overcompensated in turning towards her to hear her speaking, and his neck was suffering as a result. 

Everything hurt, if he was being honest. He was coming down from the adrenalin with a hard crash, and his stupid medical gown was soaking wet from the sink and the blood, and was not helping the shivering at all. 

_No one expects you to stay._

He grunted in frustration and shook his head, trying to shake out the words. It shouldn't hurt, goddamnit, because it should have just been acceptable fact. 

She'd given him the location for his lightsaber. That was at least something he'd need if he was going to stay- he could get the lightsaber and wait and if anyone came for them before she woke, he'd be armed and able to deal with them. It wasn't an acknowledgement that running would be easier if he had his weapon. It wasn't. 

He was holding his breath as he pried open the panel in the electrical box, and as promised, there was a hollow cavity in behind the wires. Reaching his hand in, and hoping there were no spiders, his fingers closed around a familiar rod-shaped item after a moment of fumbling around. He would have recognised his lightsaber anyway, the exquisite engravings worn and smooth from decades of touch; it felt like recovering a lost limb, like he was only just now starting to feel whole again after months and months lost in the dark. 

He turned around, lightsaber in hand, and surveyed the room. Wherever this place was that they were hidden, it would likely never be safe for medical purposes again without extensive repairs and renovations. So many of the fittings, like the sinks, had been ripped away from the walls and destroyed, so many electrical ports were blackened and sparking. The guilt burned brighter in him as he took it all in, knowing this had all been done to hurt or kill him. 

And Kol’aya. They’d tried to kill her to hinder or prevent his recovery. She was hurt because of _him_.

There was a small voice inside of him, petulant and angry, and if he listened closely to it, it sounded as if it was saying _prove them wrong_. 

They expected him to run. Everyone, she’d said. Everyone expected him to run like the coward he was and leave another to suffer for his mistakes yet again. Well. It wasn’t like he hadn’t spent a lifetime making decisions based on spite alone. This wouldn’t be any different.

He was fucking freezing, so that seemed like the best place to start; after ferreting around in the broken cabinets and hatches that had been upended on the floor, he found a stash of clothing. He turned his nose up at the hospital gowns, and found a few more items of clothing that clearly belonged to her. More short skirts and glittery dance tops clearly intended to pass off her presence in the area as that of a reveller; his curiosity as to where they were and where they were hiding inched higher, only for his brain to abruptly short circuit the moment he realised he was holding a pair of her underpants in his hands. He dropped them as if they were red hot, awkwardly pulling a shirt over them to hide them from view as he glanced over his shoulder to make sure she hadn’t woken up and seen him. 

Not like he hadn’t seen his share of other people’s underpants before, but that was in decidedly more intimate circumstances. 

_More intimate than having your hands inside of her and her life in your hands?_

He scowled, telling himself he wasn’t blushing. It was just black lace, who cared. He could go on the holonet and see plenty of individuals of a variety of genders and species in black lace if he wanted to. It didn’t matter at all. That Kol’aya wore them, he meant. That was what he meant. 

There was a very generic few pairs of grey slacks, and the only shirts in the mess that he could find- apart from her glittery ones- were sleeveless. They all fit him, surprisingly, and he had to wonder if they’d been intended for him in the first place, something to wear once they’d deemed him hale enough to get out of bed. It made sense, in a weirdly macabre sort of way, because a sleeveless shirt certainly made it easier to access his shoulder and the recovering surgical sites where she’d implanted his new arm. Practical thinking, even. 

He did feel peculiarly exposed though- after the first accident on Korriban years ago, he’d taken great pains to protect his shoulder while simultaneously forcing attention to it. He’d worn massive shoulder guards, both under and above his clothing, to hide his injury while also making it impossible to ignore; he was damaged, broken, ruined, but he wasn’t going to let people think less of him for it. He was going to make them confront it, and acknowledge him as superior even despite his new limitations. 

There were no shoulder guards now, and the prosthetic input plug embedded in his side was sleeker, more subtle. Less ostentatious than he might have worn when he was a different, angrier man; the prosthetic itself was less bulky, no less powerful but more reserved. It felt like an extension of himself in a way the other never had, and it struck him that it was probably a result of her work and influence- it had been designed _for_ him, not for his ego. His ego hadn’t even been allowed a comment in the proceedings. 

Adequately dressed, if somewhat emotionally raw, he stared around the room at somewhat of a loss as to what to do. Kol’aya was still lying sprawled across the fold-out bed where he’d dumped her in the first place, still unconscious and breathing steadily, but with her shirt torn open and her torso sticky with blood and her pants ripped up almost to her hips from where he’d had to inject her earlier. He tried to keep his gaze away from her in that state, for her own modesty, but leaving her like that was beginning to nag at his conscience. 

Was he... was it considered wrong to help her while she was like this? While she was unconscious and couldn’t object or accept his assistance? What could he even do, when even bumping her a little might mean reopening the wound and undoing all the work he’d clumsily managed earlier?

And why did he even _care_ about helping her, anyway? A year ago he wouldn’t have cared. Probably. Maybe. No, he was a coward, and a thuggish tyrant, he’d read enough holonet pages to know what people thought of him- that man in the gossip columns and the emotional editorials was good for nothing but violence and hate. But... he wasn’t still that man... was he? Wasn’t that the point of what Revan had shown him? That he could choose differently? 

Grunting in frustration at the circular nature of his thoughts, he stalked over to the bed and back to her side. She hadn’t moved or made a sound through all of his ferreting through the room, upending furniture and smashed pieces of debris. She wasn’t likely to move or wake up if he did a few things to help, right? 

First things first- he stared very pointedly at the wall as he settled a blanket down over her body, trying to cover her injuries and her modest nudity; he couldn’t pull it out from underneath her without jostling her, and he didn’t want to risk that, so it was sort of a stretch to get her covered adequately. In the end, he had to settle for covering the wound in her torso ahead of the gaping hole in her pants, which wasn’t far enough in his opinion, but at least it covered the more extensive, ah, _heights_ of her thighs. She wasn’t quite straight on the bed either, and it didn’t look comfortable, so he awkwardly tried to reposition her without disturbing her wound; she was a dead weight, one that didn’t quite respond to gentle prodding. He held his breath as he slid his hand over the far side of her waist and eased her across, wincing when she stirred slightly. She didn’t wake, and he breathed out in relief. 

Cleaning seemed to be the next most sensible step, because he didn’t want to just drape a blanket over her and leave her lying in a puddle of chemicals and blood. He started to collect- _shit_ , he’d forgotten all about Mako. 

He skirted around the debris and the sparking wires and skidded to a halt by the doorway again, dropping to his knees beside the young woman. She was still blissfully unconscious as she lay in the puddle of food, and he felt a moment of childish satisfaction when he spotted the upended bowls of noodles, knowing that he wouldn’t have to eat them now. “Mako,” he said, shaking her by the shoulders again. “Mako!”

As before, she didn’t awaken and he gritted his teeth in frustration. Knight-Hunters trained in some rather eclectic fields, all the more to help them outwit and overpower their quarry, and he wasn’t really fully trained in some of the schools of mental domination. His father had always considered that to be the domain of the Scions, and his own hatred for the Scions had led to their secrets slowly being siphoned away to other divisions of his armies. He hadn’t trained in them, of course. It would have to be a searing hot day in the underworld before he’d ever accept training in the Scions arts. 

Right now, of course, he was regretting that choice, because he had no idea how to break a mental compulsion and he really needed Mako to wake up quite desperately. 

_No one expects you to stay._

He needed to prove them wrong. 

Closing his eyes, he took Mako’s face between his hands and concentrated, not sure precisely what to concentrate on, but determined to do it. _Wake up_ , he thought fiercely, _wake up_. Over and over, the same two words, and as the seconds passed and nothing happened, he began to feel a growing kernel of despair in his belly. He didn’t want Kol’aya to die, and if he was being honest, he probably didn’t want Mako to get hurt because of him either. She seemed nice enough. How long until the next assassin reached them, and he was left to defend two unconscious women against a growing number of fanatical killers? 

He didn’t want Kol’aya to die because of him.

_Please wake up._

Mako’s eyes flew open, and she sucked in a loud breath; Arcann nearly fell backwards onto his ass, but corrected his balance at the last minute. “Mako,” he started to say, but she immediately shrieked and tried to scrabble backwards in the hallway, dragging a trail of lumpy food as she went. 

“Get away from me!” she shrieked, fumbling at her side for her blaster.

“Kol’aya is hurt!” he said quickly, lifting both hands in a gesture of surrender. 

She froze, her hand still on her hip. “What?” she said, and the fear in her eyes grew more pronounced. “I swear to Kad Ha’rangir, I will kill you so slowly and so painfully if you have hurt her-”

“Mako, please.” Gods damn it, was she daft? “That woman you brought back, she was an assassin. Kol’aya is hurt, I need your help.”

Her brow crinkled in confusion. “The woman I...” She scrambled to her feet and pushed past him, charging into the room like a woman possessed. She let out a cry like a wounded animal, and Arcann grunted as he climbed painfully upright and followed her, finding her standing over the body of the dead Knight-Hunter, her face clutched between her hands. “Oh no,” she moaned, “oh no, oh no, this is all my fault, oh stars-”

“Mako!” He grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around, and there were already tears cascading down her cheeks. “We have to-”

“I don’t even remember it!” she babbled, clinging to his shirt as if she was trying to drag him closer, as if she was trying to convince him. “I was in the foodhall, and then I was here, and I-”

“We don’t have time for this,” he snapped, pushing her away. Gods, he could scarcely carry the weight of his own conscience, he didn’t have time for her tears. He stomped over to where Kol’aya lay, gesturing jerkily to her. “I did what I could, but more assassins will come. We have to get her somewhere safe.” 

“What do you mean _‘we’_?” she asked 

He wanted to shake her. “One, that’s hardly the most pressing issue at hand, and two, I’m not going to leave her like this,” he said. Bracing himself, he bent down and slid his arms underneath her, grunting in pain as he hoisted her into the air and up against his chest. She let out a sound, not quite a moan and not quite a gurgle, but her eyes didn’t open. His shoulder was already aching from the effort, but he ignored it. 

“I’m going to save her,” he said, trying not to let the strain show on his face, “so tell me where I can take her where I’m not going to get shot on sight.”


	19. Chapter 19

Mako led him from the room at speed, darting out through the doorway almost faster than Arcann could comfortably keep pace; the debris on the floor and the puddled liquids of spilled dinners was enough of a hazard that she was halfway down the hallway by the time he got his feet under him without fear of slipping. He scowled at her retreating back, hastening after her while trying hard not to jostle Kol’aya in his arms. She was a dead weight, the strain in his healing shoulder almost unbearable, but he refused to acknowledge the pain.

He’d spent over half a decade ignoring worse. This was nothing. 

The hazy beat of the music was louder out here, and he had to wonder for what felt like the thousandth time why they’d thought to hide him in a nightclub. True, if he was leading a manhunt for an injured man, it wouldn’t cross his mind to look there, but... how had it crossed _their_ minds in the first place? 

Mako ducked into a room ahead of him, and he hurried to catch up to her; the last thing he wanted was for her to vanish, either fleeing the likelihood of more assassins or racing to alert their allies that he’d compromised their safety. He lurched through the door after her, half ready to throw up a shield at a moment’s notice in case it was a trick, but instead he nearly ran into the back of her as she stood in what appeared to be some kind of commercial kitchen. 

“Oh, thank the stars, Caliah,” she said, and he followed her line of sight to find the sole occupant in the room. “We need your help!” 

There was a single Zeltron seated at some kind of staff table, by the looks of the knick knacks and dirty dishes and discarded jackets strewn about; he was middle-aged (although to be honest, Arcann couldn’t confidently say he was certain the individual was male, Zeltrons seemed to exude an aura of such exquisite beauty that they seemed to transcend gender) and despite the incandescent nature of his physical features, he seemed to be somewhat... average. His bright blue hair seemed to be thinning, and beneath the black mesh shirt he wore, he was definitely chubby, his pierced nipples hanging heavily against the netting. More than that, however, he looked remarkably fed up. That could have been because they seemed to have interrupted his own mealtime, a bowl of assorted fruit pieces settled in front of him with a spoon raised halfway to his mouth. 

His eyes were wide beneath the shock of blue hair, but he otherwise hadn’t moved at their dramatic entrance. Taking in Arcann walking around freely and unguarded, and Kol’aya unconscious and bloodied in his arms, the Zeltron threw his spoon down on the table in disgust. “What the fuck, Mako?” he said flatly.

“Okay, I know it looks bad-”

“That’s because it _does_ look bad!” 

“Listen! We need to get Kol to Elsie’s real fast-”

“What the fuck even happened? Sundancer, what-”

They didn’t have time for this. “There is a dead Zakuulan assassin upstairs, and more are likely on their way,” Arcann said bluntly, speaking over the top of them. They both fell silent. “I for one have no interest in standing here waiting for them to arrive, so if we could please see that Doctor Torr receives medical care somewhere far from here, I would appreciate that.” 

The Zeltron (Caliah? Was that the name Mako had given him?) stared flatly at him, hostile and disgusted with him all at once. That was the attitude he had been expecting from Kol’aya since the day he’d first woken under her care, and yet, seeing it now on the face of another, it was abundantly clear that she’d never felt that sort of animosity towards him. 

Huh. 

But instead of moving to obey his command, Caliah just threw his arms up in disgust. “I told Mama Kara that this wasn’t gonna bring nothing but trouble,” he started to say, but just as Arcann started to snarl a command, Mako surprised him by drawing her blaster and pointing it directly at the Zeltron. Caliah paused, his lip turning up with an exasperated _‘ugh’_. “Seriously, Mako?”

“Get the fuck up, and take us to a speeder,” Mako said, and her voice wasn’t even wobbling. In fact, she sounded utterly incensed, and Arcann had to marvel at the change in the young woman from upstairs, distraught at the thought that she might have been responsible for her friend’s predicament. “And don’t be a smartass and offer us a bike, because if a bike was an option we’d’ve already taken mine. Speeder. _Now_.” 

That seemed to be the right sort of incentive for him, because Caliah finally climbed to his feet, making sure to keep his arms out by his sides. “You know,” he drawled, walking around the table towards them while his tight leather pants squeaked with each step, “Mama ain’t gonna be happy you pulled a blaster in her house.”

Mako kept the blaster trained on him as she and Arcann backed up enough to give him room through the door. “Yeah, well, I can deal with Mama being upset a lot easier than I can deal with Kol being dead,” she said coldly. “ _Move_.”

The throbbing of the distant music seemed somehow ominous, like the frantic pulse he could feel in his own throat; it was too fast, too heavy, and it only served to remind him of the wild adrenalin of the fight and the desperate moments after as he tried to keep Kol’aya alive. Caliah seemed oblivious to the urgency of the situation, and led them through the last few hallways without any haste; the smell of perfume and sweat and alcohol grew thick in the air, and something else with it- something heady and intoxicating that seeped into Arcann’s veins and made him swallow uncomfortably, his skin almost painfully aware of every place he could feel Kol’aya pressing against him. 

Ahead of him, he heard Mako curse under her breath, and she rubbed at the back of her neck with her free hand. It should’ve been a comfort to know that he wasn’t the only one affected by the potency of the Zeltron pheromones, but it was an annoyance he really didn’t want to deal with right now. 

A door opened ahead of them, and for a moment the music grew much louder; two more Zeltron entered the hall with them, one tall and statuesque and the other small and curvaceous. Both of them were dressed as provocatively as Caliah, and they both hesitated as they saw them approaching, their deep pink skin glittering with sweat and glitter. 

“Dead assassin upstairs,” Caliah said casually, breezing past them. “Tell Mama we got trouble coming.” 

They stared dumbstruck as they passed, and Arcann stared boldly at them, daring them to show him the same disrespect that Caliah had in the first room. Neither of them seemed to be able to collect themselves enough to sneer after them, and they vanished behind the next corner, still gaping after them. 

They exited into a large garage, and Caliah gestured vaguely towards the closest speeder. “Have at, or whatever,” he said, apparently determined to be as disinterested in proceedings as possible. 

Arcann climbed over the side of the speeder without bothering to open the door; it wasn’t like he had a free hand to deal with doors as it was, anyway. Mako seemed like she’d been about to open it for him, but she ducked deftly out of the way and vaulted into the front passenger seat instead. While Caliah took his time sauntering around to the driver’s seat, Arcann settled down as comfortably as he could in the back with Kol’aya on his lap; she hadn’t stirred in the slightest despite his jostling, and he found himself cupping her cheek in his hand to turn her face towards him, the better to check on her. She was breathing, which was some small relief, but her golden skin was remarkably grey and her lekku hung limply against the seat. 

Fuck. This was all his fault. If she died because of him-

_No_. Not an option. She _wasn’t_ going to die. 

Caliah finally settled in the driver’s seat, and the engine rumbled to life at last. He made a show of adjusting the mirrors and fiddling with the steering wheel. 

Arcann kicked the back of his chair. 

“Alright, alright, keep your shirt on.” The garage door opened behind them, and Caliah took them out onto the street. “I’ll send you a bill for cleaning the blood off the leather, so if the shirt stops any of it from staining the seats-”

“Copaani mirshmure’cye, vod?” Mako snarled. 

“Oi, don’t you go thinking your pretty little mando’a phrases’ll make me titter,” Caliah said, pulling out of the alley. “It takes more than that to-”

He slammed on the brakes as a squad of Skytroopers assembled outside of the nightclub turned towards them as one, the lights on their visors flashing with warning red lights. 

“-intimidate me,” he finished, yanking hard on the wheel. “Hang on!” 

The speeder went screaming skywards at an agonising angle, enough that Mako had to grab onto the dashboard not to go toppling out of her seat and back onto the street below. Arcann braced himself in the backseat, clinging to Kol’aya as hard as he dared; he barely had time to throw up a shield around the four of them before the air around them was burning with blaster fire, the streaks of crimson and gold searing through the sky and hammering at the speeder. More than a few landed against the shield, and Arcann grunted; it was hardly a taxing effort on his part most of the time, but he was hardly at full strength right now. Izax forfend, the idea of fighting his way clear of Kol’aya seemed almost laughable now, caught in an actual combat situation. 

They went surging out from between the buildings, rocketing up into the crowded traffic lanes, and it was only now that Arcann recognised the skyline and the pollution as belonging to Nar Shaddaa. Of course they’d take him to what passed for neutral territory- at the very least, the Hutts could always be paid to look the other way, which was more than could be said for most officials in other governments. 

Caliah, for all of his feet-dragging earlier, seemed to be an exemplary driver, weaving in and out of the traffic at a speed that would have alarmed him if he didn’t have other things on his mind. As he watched, Mako unhooked her seatbelt and climbed up onto her knees, turning around and raising her blaster again. “Heads up!” she yelled, letting off a volley of blaster fire behind them that was answered by a smattering against the shield. Glancing over his shoulder awkwardly, Arcann could see the crisp white of the Skytroopers speeding after them, thundering through the traffic with no regard for the other drivers and vehicles in the sky. Even as he watched, one of them went slamming into a speeder bike, sending it spinning in wild circles as it careened towards the side of a nearby skyscraper; without thinking, he threw out his cybernetic arm and grabbed for it through the Force, marvelling at the surge of familiar power that he hadn’t been able to feel in his long absent left arm for years. 

Gods, what kind of wizardry did Kol’aya have at her fingertips, to give him back something as intangible as his control over the Force?

It was a question for another time, because the threat of imminent death was more pressing; with a sharp, wrenching gesture, he caught the speeder as it spun out of control, grunting as the effort weighed down on him violently. He set the speeder down on the first balcony within reach, wincing as it went skidding hard up against the wall and sent the two riders sprawling across the floor. 

But they weren’t dead, they hadn’t been killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, either falling to their deaths in the depths or burning up in the explosion from the crash, and that had to count for something. Right? He’d endangered them, but he’d saved them, right?

“Haar’chak!” Mako’s curse brought him back to the present urgency, and he looked back up to see her rubbing at a singe mark on her shoulder. “Any time you wanna lose them, Caliah!”

“Any time you wanna shoot straight, Mako!” 

“If you could just drive straight-”

“I’ve never done anything straight in my life and you know it!”

With a snarl on her face, Mako shot another round of blaster bolts in their wake, and Arcann risked another look over his shoulder. Behind them was utter chaos, with speeders lurching in all directions to get out of the way of the chase, and more than a few smoking wrecks implying some hadn’t been fast enough; he felt sick to his stomach looking at the death and destruction being wrought in pursuit of him. 

“Don’t look so miserable,” Mako yelled, and he glanced up at her. She was still focussed on the Skytroopers she hadn’t yet shot out of the sky, but she risked a quick look in his direction. “This is Nar Shaddaa-”

“Innocent people are dying because of me,” he shouted back over the roar of the speeder engine. 

“Yeah, welcome to anywhere in the galaxy for the last six years, or’dinii,” she said. “A speeder chase with casualties, that’s just a normal Centaxday on Nar Shaddaa.” 

“That’s a normal _any_ day of the week on Nar Shaddaa,” Caliah corrected.

In his arms, Kol’aya made a miserable sound- something pained and primal, and it wrenched at him, the guilt like a hook between his ribs pulling slowly and agonisingly. “Can’t you go any faster?” he yelled, holding her closer. She seemed cold to the touch, but her stomach seemed far too warm, and he put his hand over her wound without any better idea of what to do. 

He couldn’t see Caliah roll his eyes, but he could sense it. “Sorry, my bad, I thought you wanted the scenic route,” he said sarcastically. 

_Don’t die_ , Arcann thought helplessly, cradling Kol’aya as tight as he dared. _Don’t die, I’m sorry. It should have been me._

In the front seat, Mako whooped darkly, plonking back down with a tired sigh. “I think that was all of them,” she said, but she didn’t put her blaster away. “At this rate, they’ve probably got a whole sector alert going out. Next few hours are going to be interesting.” 

“Can you slice the embassy, see if you can’t wipe it?” Caliah asked, darting through a gap between two buildings so small that Arcann could see sparks flying out behind them whenever the frame touched the walls. 

“Course I can, who do you think you’re talking to?”

“Well, can’t you do that shit now? If Zak killers are about to descend en masse on my family establishment, I’d really appreciate it if you could do something about it!” 

“No, Caliah, amazingly I can’t slice one of the most secure networks in the entire galaxy from a moving speeder with nothing but a dashboard radio and a blaster to work with!” 

“Are we almost there?” Arcann pleaded, holding Kol’aya’s face in one hand as he held her tight. Her breathing was slightly pained, and he couldn’t tell if the faint hint of red on her lips was old makeup or blood in her mouth. 

“Moonsinger take the wheel, did you ask every five minutes if you were there yet on your trip from Zakuul to the Core as well?” Even as he said that, Caliah was in the process of slowing, and Arcann looked up to realise they were approaching one of the hovering platforms that lazily patrolled the skies; unlike all of the others, however, this one was not awash with neon lights and glitzy posters offering sex and gambling and various illegal imbibements, but seemed rather stark in comparison. “But yes, we are-” 

Before Caliah had even pulled the speeder to a full stop, Arcann was lunging up and out, using the momentum of the vehicle to propel himself forward. Kol’aya’s laboured breathing was tormenting him, and he wasn’t going to waste a second longer than necessary to get her the help she needed. Behind him, he heard Caliah laugh, and the sound made his blood boil- if Kol’aya’s survival hadn’t been his first priority, he might’ve turned around and thrown the insolent cur off the edge of the platform like he so rightly deserved. 

“Arcann.”

He ignored Mako and kept charging towards the door. The platform had a pleasant fountain, and well trimmed gardens, and above the arched doorway was a metal staff bearing a pair of broad, feathered wings, the universally recognised symbol of the medical profession regardless of faction. 

“ _Arcann_.”

There were two individuals seated on the knee-high wall surrounding the garden, and they both wore the armour of the Mandalorian clans. Both of them stopped their conversation, and both moved their hands to the blasters on their belts as he approached. 

He ignored them.

“Okay, seriously, but maybe let me-”

He strode through the doorway with Kol’aya held tightly to his chest, and the crowded waiting room beyond came to a screeching halt, the silence falling like a hypermatter bomb.

“-go first,” Mako finished weakly, shuffling in after him and peering around his shoulder. 

He had never been in a hospital before- not a building that served the general public, anyway. As the treasured prince, second in line to the throne regardless of Valkorion’s disdain for him in private, he had been treated with the utmost care throughout his life, tended to by personal physicians and nursing staff and never ever subjected to anything but the absolute finest medical treatments in the galaxy. This was... a shock, to say the least, crowded and with a vaguely unpleasant odour, clean enough but with a certain aura of desperation that seemed to just radiate from the collective hopelessness of those assembled in the large room. 

The chairs were plastic, and the trees were fake. The posters on the walls were faded. If he hadn’t recognised the symbol above the door in the first place, he might’ve suspected Caliah of deliberately bringing them to the wrong place, because surely this wasn’t a hospital?

Everyone was staring at him, patients and nurses and doctors and security guards and people who didn’t seem to fall under any of those categories. He heard someone whisper loudly _‘that’s the emperor, right?’_ and someone hushed them almost hysterically. There was a girl on the front desk, wearing medical scrubs and with her mouth hanging open in something that seemed to want to teeter between terror and fury. 

He gritted his teeth, the psychic bombardment of hate and fear since his entrance almost overwhelming him; he swallowed down the urge to snarl, and stomped down the few steps to the desk. Mako lunged after him, but again he didn’t let her speak first. 

“She needs assistance,” he said loudly, letting his voice carry through the space. There was no point in hiding. They knew who he was. 

The girl- a nurse? A medic? A woefully unprepared administrator?- swallowed very nervously, her smile so forced that her lips seemed to vanish entirely as she glanced from him to Kol’aya. “She, ah-”

“She has a stomach injury,” he continued. “I was under the impression anyone could receive medical aid here without question?” 

The girl was nodding her head rapidly, but it didn’t seem to be in agreement for anything. “Let me, ah-” She swallowed again, still nodding; her voice verged on hysterical. “I’m just gonna- I’m gonna call Doctor Cordovich?” 

“If that ensures she will be seen as soon as possible, then please do.” 

Her hands were shaking as she fumbled with the internal comm system, and given the silence in the lobby it was quite easy to hear her, even though she tried to turn her face away from him and cover her mouth. “Doctor- yes? Yes, ma’am, he is. Yes, I- I think. Yes. Okay, thank you.” She turned back to him, the bizarre not-quite-smile back in place. “She-”

“I heard,” he said flatly. “She really needs to be seen immediately.”

“Sir, um, I mean- your Majesty? She’ll be seen as soon as Doctor Cordovich gets here.” 

He stared coldly at her. “Is the fact that she is not being seen until your doctor gets here because of who you think I am?” 

She flinched. “I, uh-”

“Don’t go taking that tone,” a deep voice growled behind him, and when he glared back over his shoulder he saw a helmeted Mandalorian standing with arms crossed, watching him. “Ain’t no one wants you here, chakaaryc, so you best be curtseying and shit if you don’t want to get thrown out on your ear.” 

“She is _dying_ ,” he snarled, his temper spiking. “She needs-”

“What she needs is not for you boys to go stomping up and down in my waiting area like it’s a boxing ring,” said another voice, calm and frosty and more than a little irritated. “My rules have always been very clear- once you step over the threshold of my establishment, you leave your squabbles and your grievances at the door.”

He turned away from the Mandalorian and towards the speaker, blinking when he found he had to look down to find her. The speaker was an absolutely tiny woman, stooped with age and supported by a walking cane; she wore her hair pulled back in a severe bun, and a white coat just like Kol’aya had worn. He steeled himself. “You are in charge?” he asked.

The way the doctor looked at him made him feel peculiarly like he was five years old and being asked to account for the absence of missing sweets from the kitchen. “This is my home, which I open to those in need,” the doctor said mildly. “And I am more than happy to close my door to those without the manners nor the temperament to appreciate-”

“ _Please_ ,” he begged, holding Kol’aya tight to his chest. “Throw me out if it serves you best, but she needs your help.” 

The doctor pursed her lips. “Please do not interrupt me, young man,” she said.

“My apologies,” he said. “Please, I’m begging you-”

“There’s no need to beg,” she said, gesturing over her shoulder with one hand. A very large togruta man in medical scrubs appeared, and he moved to take Kol’aya from him; he had to fight the urge to snarl at him and snatch her back, but he managed it. The nurse or medic or whatever he was took her away immediately, vanishing through a nearby doorway. “Kol’aya will receive the best of care with us.”

He flexed his hands, his shoulder aching from having carried her for so long. “You know who she is?” he asked gruffly. 

“Indeed,” she said, moving to put both hands over the head of the cane. “Kol’aya has spent many years donating her time and her energy to our establishment, when her travels bring her to our corner of the galaxy. She will be in the best of care with us.” 

Instead of easing his nerves, it only served to irritate him further. “Then why did your staff hesitate to accept her?” 

The tiny woman chuckled. “Oh, young man, I do not think it wise for you to continue using such a tone in my establishment.”

There was movement over his shoulder, and when he glanced back, it was to see the Mandalorian from earlier behind him, flanked by another two, the couple from outside. All of them had their hands on their hips, within easy reach of their weapons. 

He gritted his teeth and looked back to her. “It is a legitimate question,” he growled, but she shook her head. 

“Everyone here has a right to be suspect at the unannounced presence of our suspiciously absent emperor, young man,” she said, still amused. “And everyone here has a right to be afraid of that emperor.” 

“My crimes shouldn’t be a hindrance to an injured woman receiving treatment!” 

“Don’t shout at Doctor Cordovich,” growled the same Mandalorian from earlier. A heavily gloved hand came down on his healthy shoulder, and it took everything in him not to reach up instantly to hurl the offender over onto the ground. 

“Don’t touch me,” he hissed from between clenched teeth. 

“Guess they don’t bother teaching you fancy folk no manners, eh?” 

“The fact that I have not killed every one of you for the insults you level at me is as polite as you are likely to find me.” 

Doctor Cordovich banged her cane loudly on the ground. “Gentlemen,” she said tersely, “my establishment has one rule, and one alone. All grievances must be left at the door, or you will find yourself evicted. It is not a difficult or complicated rule, and I expect nothing but total obedience.” 

“But-”

“Young man, you are trying my patience,” she said. “In my house, it does not matter if you are emperor of the galaxy, or emperor of your own living room, you will respect my rules and respect my house.” 

He nearly snarled back at her, his temper burning bright within him, but... Kol’aya. With immense difficulty, he swallowed down the worst of it and bowed his head. “I don’t have a living room,” he said, as close to humility as he could manage.

“Then, emperor of nothing, take a seat and keep your mouth shut. We will see to Kol’aya and you will respect the peace of this establishment and do nothing to disrupt my other patrons.” She leaned slightly to the side, as if peering around him. “Good evening, Mako. Are you well?”

He’d all but forgotten the small slicer was there, but she appeared in his peripheral vision almost awkwardly. “Hey, Elsie,” she said faintly, waving hesitantly before clearly deciding it was a weird thing to do. “I need to use a console, if you’ve got one spare.”

“Hmmph. You know you of all people should know you do not need to ask for such things.”

“I’ll, ah... keep out of the way.”

And then that was clearly the end of the discussion, because Doctor Cordovich turned on her heel and hobbled back towards the door through which she’d entered; Arcann was left standing in the middle of the lobby with a wide space around him, like hot water dropped onto a sheet of ice, rapidly melting a space around it. 

“Oh.” Doctor Cordovich turned back around again, with some apparent difficulty, but this was not something directed at him, if he understood her tone correctly. “And it goes without saying, I believe, that there is to be no contacting of outside authorities to report the location of wanted persons. My establishment is neutral ground, and a sanctuary at that.”

“That’s not going to stop any Skytroopers that come for me,” he said, answering even though she hadn’t aimed the comment at him. She was honestly expecting a lot if she thought no one would take the risk of turning him over to Vaylin, or the Empire, or the Republic, or any of the other thousands of individuals who had reason to want him dead- not with how incomprehensibly large he knew any reward would be.

“Then, young man, I hope you remember my rule- that trouble stays out of my establishment. If they come for you, you’d best do something about that.” 

She was literally half his size, but she made him feel about three inches tall. “Yes, ma’am.” 

She nodded, and left, and the lobby was left hanging in that excruciatingly awkward silence that had overtaken it when he’d first walked in. It was perhaps a little less volatile, but the psychic weight of it hadn’t lessened. It was suffocating. 

Arcann straightened his shoulders and went to march over to an empty seat, for lack of anything better to do, but the girl at the reception desk raised a hand almost cringingly. “Yes?” he said curtly.

“Are... are you going to, um- I mean, your Majesty, are you able to, uh-”

He fought the urge to sigh. “Just spit it out.”

“The admission forms,” she said in a rush, almost mortified. “Are you, or, um, can you...?”

Well, alright, that was unexpected. “What’s an admission form?” 

Someone laughed nastily from nearby. “Ay, don’t they teach you namby-pamby folk in your fancy space tower how to act like regular plebs?” 

It roused a smattering of laughter from the room, and he felt his ears burning. “ _What_ is an admission form?” he repeated from between clenched teeth. 

The girl looked like she was about to faint. “I- it’s nothing, it’s just a few questions-”

“Then ask them and stop wasting my time.” 

Someone stepped into his space again, and he looked over his shoulder to see one of the Mandalorians standing uncomfortably close. “Be nice to the lady,” they said, the words a subtle reminder that he could and would be thrown out on his ass in the middle of Nar Shaddaa without so much as a backwards glance. And he didn’t even have shoes on, for shame. 

Stopping himself short of rolling his eyes, he looked back to the terrified nurse. “What are the questions?” 

“We, ah, we just need her- you know what, this bit is fine, she’s worked here so I can just copy it over from her employee file later.”

“Fine. Is that all you wanted?”

She flinched. “We ah...” She quite visibly pulled herself upright, eyes wide as dinner plates even though she tried to make herself look more professional. “What is the nature of the injury?”

“A stomach wound.”

“How was it incurred?”

“An explosion at close quarters. A pressurized water unit combusted and she was struck by shrapnel from the blast.”

The girl was nodding, finally looking a little more at ease now that the familiarities of her job were being addressed. “Approximately how long ago did the injury occur?” 

He rubbed at his eyes, suddenly aware of the fact that even though he hadn’t woken all that long ago, he was already devastatingly exhausted. “Sometime this morning,” he said, “maybe two hours ago?” 

“What medical treatment, if any, did the patient receive prior to arriving here?” 

“Uh...” He tried to remember any of the fancy terms she’d used when she’d been guiding him through the procedure, and gave up. “The shrapnel was removed, hopefully all of it, I couldn’t find anymore, and then we used, uh... anti-something, and two other things, I don’t know.”

The girl had paused in her typing, and her eyes darted furtively to his face before diving away again. “... _you_ couldn’t find anything more?”

For some reason, the incredulous way she said it, as if she couldn’t actually believe what he’d said, hurt his pride more than he probably had a right to. “Yes? Why is that so hard to believe?” 

“You were- you were the one providing the medical treatment?” she clarified, even more incredulous. 

“I was.” 

His words caused a murmur to ripple through the room, and he did his best to ignore it, staring forward and not turning to glare at them all. He could feel their eyes boring into the back of his skull, hostile and curious and suspicious all in one. It made his head ache. 

“I, uh- okay then,” she said weakly, typing awkwardly. “Initial medical care provided by, uh-”

“Just my name is fine,” he said. “Please stop using the title.” 

“Provided by, um... _Arcann_ ,” she said, as if his name was the most unpronounceable word she’d ever encountered. “And, uh... relation to the patient?” 

“None.” 

She stared at the screen for a moment, and then muttered under her breath “Acquaintances, then,” as she typed. She breathed out slowly, tapping her fingers against the keys without typing for a moment, and then offered him a patently false smile without looking at him. “That’s fine, your- uh, I mean... um-”

“Arcann,” he provided. 

“Yes, that,” she said, immediately back to mortified. “You can have a seat now.” 

“Is she being looked after?”

She was staring at the screen like she was hoping she could dissolve into it and vanish in a stream of numbers. “I will forward the information you’ve provided onto our emergency care doctor, and the team will-”

He sighed in exasperation. “A simple yes or no would have been sufficient,” he said, turning away from the desk and looking back towards the seating area. Unsurprisingly, the three Mandalorians were clustered by the door, casually looming as they leaned against the wall and watched him. The bench closest to the desk had been completely vacated, as had all the seats around it, and the occupants of the waiting room were instead crowded up on the far end of the hall. 

It wasn’t subtle. 

He scowled, and more than a few of them actually skittered back nervously, as if expecting him to attack or lash out. It shouldn’t have stung, because it was a very warranted fear, but it did; pride was a strange thing when it wanted to be heard. With no other options open to him, he dropped heavily into the nearest chair and did his best not to sulk, staring at his hands as they hung between his knees.

The silence in the room was almost unbearable. “I’m not going to eat any of you,” he snapped, not looking up. 

Someone let out a disgusted snort. “My mother was taken away three years ago, while the Star Fortress was still operational,” a woman’s voice said. “I never saw her again.” 

“Both of my brothers were killed by a skytrooper patrol,” someone else said. 

“One of your Exarchs killed our Mandalore,” spat the first Mandalorian who’d threatened him earlier. “The only reason the clans are still clinging to life is because of Vizla and Pierce, otherwise you would have wiped out our way of life entirely.” 

He stared at his hands, and reminded himself he deserved this. “Write a list of your grievances and I’ll address them one at a time,” he said flatly, his skin prickling from the shame and humiliation. It was one thing to be aware of the suffering he had caused when it was presented just as statistics, and clinically worded reports that roused no emotion at the events listed therein. It was another thing entirely to sit and have the eyes of the victims upon you, to look upon them and realise that these were very real people, who had very definitely been hurt by his actions.

Revan had warned him, but the warning paled in comparison to the reality of his situation. 

“My sister watched her kids starve to death because she and her husband lost their jobs when you took over the mining sector to steal resources for your wars. Fucking _kids_ , neither of them deserved to die for your fucking greed.” 

He clenched his jaw. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said stiltedly, still not looking up. 

“Are you sorry for Bothawui? For that asshole you left in charge searing half their cities off the surface? You just gonna shrug and say sorry for attempted genocide?” 

Arcann closed his eyes. “I can’t change what happened- what I _allowed_ to happen,” he corrected. “I won’t make grandiose promises for the impossible. I can- I can only attempt to repair the damage done.” 

“You screwed over the entire galaxy, bud. Ain’t nobody got a lifetime long enough to fix that- not even a Hutt.”

“And you’re off to a pretty fucking poor start if you open your little forgiveness act by getting Kol killed,” someone else said, this voice far more familiar, and his eyes snapped open. He sought the speaker out in the crowd, but he was met by two dozen sets of unfriendly eyes, or more. 

From where she was hunched over at the receptionist’s desk, sharing the workspace as she tapped away furiously at a keyboard, Mako sighed. “Come on, now, Caliah,” she said wearily. 

“ _Doctor Dia’ayla to Emergency Room Three, Doctor Dia’ayla._ ”

He hadn’t even noticed Caliah come in after them, but there he was, sprawled out on a nearby bench with the rest of the angry mob, as if he’d always been there; he snorted, the sound flat and unamused. “Nah, fuck it Mako,” Caliah said. “Kol is worth a thousand of him, easy, and if she’s gone and gotten herself killed over him-”

“I didn’t _ask_ her to save me,” Arcann said, raising his voice to be heard over Caliah. 

“She is in there _dying_ ,” Caliah said loudly, incredulously, like he couldn’t believe it was even an argument. “And all you can say is you’re _sorry?_ ”

Arcann put his hand over his face, his head throbbing; the lights were too much, and the noise was too much, and his jaw ached from the tension and his neck burned and his shoulder ached and just... _gods_. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he said quietly, but not quietly enough, because the Zeltron heard him. 

“Oh, you didn’t _mean_ for this to _happen?_ You didn’t mean for it to happen, and you’re _sorry?_ ” He climbed to his feet, arms spread wide dramatically. “Good news everyone! The man who terrorised us all for five years, destroying homes and families and entire global economies, he didn’t mean it! He’s very sorry, and he didn’t mean any of it.” 

“I meant Kol’aya,” he snarled, his cybernetic hand clenching into a fist where it rested on his knee. “I didn’t mean-”

“Do you even know anything about that woman in there, except that she apparently decided your worthless hide was worth saving at the expense of her own life?” Caliah apparently flourished with attention, if the way he was waving his arms about at the crowd was any indication. “There’s not a person here who hasn’t got something to thank her for, who doesn’t owe her for their life or their family, and yet you think saying sorry is gonna just smooth it over if she dies?” 

He squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t want her to die!” 

“You know she’s got a degree from one of the fanciest medical schools in the galaxy, right? Could’ve gone and got a cushy job somewhere on a medical board, or as a private physician to some prince or _emperor_ or some shit. You know what she does instead?”

Arcann knew that, of course- he knew so much about her that it was almost embarrassing, in hindsight. At the time, all those months ago in the privacy of his quarters on Zakuul, it had seemed necessary, to absorb as much about this peculiar woman as possible so that he could corrupt her and fracture the Alliance with her defection. He didn’t want to admit to that, because it was just so abominably creepy to admit to, and he didn’t have to have a Scion’s sense for the future to know that confessing his extensive research about Kol’aya to this crowd would not go over well for him.

“She works for free, as much as she can- works for the poor and the sick, works with freed slaves and victims of trafficking,” Caliah continued. “Here on Nar Shaddaa, or she works in a clinic down on Rishi these days. You know she’s famous, right? Patented better methods of cybernetic integration or some fancy shit, because she spends all her time saving the lives of slaves who got all messed up by their masters and had to find ways to make the surgery faster and more accessible.” 

He didn’t want to hear any of it. On the sterile screen of his personal terminals at home, it seemed impressive, but distant. Altruistic, if he was being generous, but nothing of note. Now, sitting amongst the very people she’d dedicated her life to saving, the extent of her kindness and generosity was overwhelming. All of it just made him feel sick to his stomach, utterly horrified and ashamed and miserable that a woman like that would legitimately choose to help him. A woman who clearly went out of her way to put good back into the galaxy, giving her life to save a man who had offered nothing but pain and cruelty. He felt ill. 

One of the Mandalorians shifted irritably, arms crossed. “You’re not helping, Cal,” they said warningly. 

Caliah put his hands up as if in surrender. “Hey, look, I ain’t fighting him, and he ain’t fighting me, so we ain’t breaking any of old Elsie’s rules. I’m just pointing out to the worthless piece of shit there how much trouble he’s gonna be in if Kol dies and he lives.” 

Arcann couldn’t help himself. “If there was any possible way I could reverse it so that it was me in there instead of her, I’d do it!”

The Zeltron chuckled nastily. “We all know if it was you half dead, Mister Emperor sir, that ain’t no-one out here would be looking to see you fixed up the same as we would for her.” 

He closed his eyes. “She did.”

“Ay. And look what she got for her troubles. You fucker.” 

A door hissed open, and Arcann looked up to see the most extraordinarily tall twi’lek he had ever seen in his life stalk into the room with the sort of ferocity he would expect from a military leader. She wore a scowl as if it was her natural expression, and the elaborate golden headpiece she wore upon her brow seemed inappropriately gaudy for a hospital setting. She wore a medical coat, so he presumed she was some kind of medic. 

Worryingly, he could also feel her presence through the Force, cold and sharp and precise. 

Her gaze fell on him, her eyes cutting through him like a vibroknife. “You,” she said, her words falling over the hushed crowd, “follow me.” 

No please, no courtesy- not even any explanation as to why he was needed. “I hardly think-”

“No, that is evident in most of your behaviour,” she said curtly. “Now, follow me.” 

A snicker or two whispered through the crowded room, and he tried to ignore the way his ears burned at the barb. “As you command,” he said, just as snidely, climbing to his feet. The tall woman stood waiting as he crossed the room, her arms folded in a manner that was at once both scolding and impatient. When he reached her, she gestured sharply to the still open door, and he tried his best not to let his trepidation show; he wouldn’t let her know she intimidated him. 

She followed him into the small room, which appeared to be some kind of examination room, judging by the single bed in the centre of the room, and he eyed it uncomfortably. “Alright,” she said briskly, “take off your clothes.”

It was absolutely the last thing he’d expected from her, and he felt a wave of embarrassment sweep over him. “What?” he snapped, spinning to face her with his face flaming. “Absolutely not!” 

She crossed her arms again. “You are covered in blood,” she said.

“It’s not mine!”

“And blood is a potential contaminant, and we cannot allow you to sit around immunocompromised individuals in such a state.” She raised her eyebrows at him. “Or perhaps you’d like to argue about that as well?” 

The skin on his face was heated so badly with embarrassment that he could feel his scars aching. “I- no,” he finally said awkwardly. 

She nodded brusquely. “Good,” she said, and he got the distinct impression that that was the closest she came to politeness. “There is a spare change of clothing on the end of the bed there. Please use the refresher unit on the far wall to see to your ablutions.” Saying that, she moved over to the desk by the door, taking a seat and turning her back to him. 

Arcann hesitated, glancing between her and the painfully exposed refresher she had pointed to. “You’re just-”

“I have no interest in watching you shower, Master Tirall,” she said coldly, not even stirring from where she worked at the computer terminal. “Please remove your soiled garments and clean yourself, or I will take matters into my own hands- and believe me, neither of us will enjoy that.”

He tried not to think of the humiliation of having Kol’aya wash him in those first few days after he’d woken, and instead stared leerily at the door. 

“No one is going to disturb us,” the woman said loudly, the irritation in her voice growing stronger. “You are starting to try my patience, Master-”

“Alright, alright,” he snapped, stomping over to the small shower faucet in the wall and pulling the clothes off with jerky, frustrated motions. He left them where they fell, determined to make this as unpleasant for her as it was for him, and fiddled with the controls until he was satisfied with the temperature of the water. 

He had to admit, he had quite a lot of blood on him, even after going to the effort of trying to clean up back at the nightclub. The nightclub. Gods, could this day get any more surreal? Hidden in a Zeltron nightclub, attacked by a Zakuulan Knight-Hunter- someone who should have served him unquestioningly- and pursued by his own Skytroopers, and now hiding away in what appeared to be some kind of Mandalorian hospital. On Nar Shaddaa, of all places, and being berated by someone he strongly suspected was a Sith. 

Speaking of...

He glanced over his shoulder towards her, eyes narrowing as he tried to get a better assessment of her powers. She was definitely not a Jedi, that much was apparent, and the greater galaxy did seem to have a woefully binarist notion of what a Force-user could be; ergo if she wasn’t a Jedi, then she-

“This is not a luxury spa, your Majesty,” she said coldly, still not looking back at him. “If you are suitably clean, then I would strongly suggest you get out of the water. I did not bring you in here to relax.”

He scowled, looking down at himself to ensure he was in fact clean. “Who are you?” he asked, slapping the controls irritably to turn the water off. 

“My name is Dia’ayla, and I am a doctor here.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“I am not in the business of making pointless assumptions based on the presumption that I am a mindreader, Master Tirall,” she said, her voice betraying nothing. As if sensing his next question, she said “There is a towel on the shelf to your right.” 

As he towelled himself dry and pulled on the clothes she had laid out for him- a spare set of medical scrubs and slippers, hardly ideal, but he couldn’t really ask for a set of armour- he considered his next question with a little more care. “You called me in here for something,” he said, pulling the shirt down over his shoulders and wincing a little at the strain in the left joint. 

“I called you in here because you were covered in blood.”

“Were you afraid I was going to start a fight in the waiting area with the other patrons?”

She finally rose to her feet, and he was annoyed at the fact that she was quite a few inches taller than he was, even if one didn’t account for her lekku. “Caliah is a braggart and a drunkard, whose bark is far worse than his bite,” she said, as she collected the soiled clothing items and dropped them in a biohazard bin by the wall. “The Mandalorians all know better than to upset Doctor Cordovich, but they would also defend her to the death without question.”

“Is she Mandalorian?”

“Good heavens, no. Aunt Elspeth has never been one for political alignment of any description, even arguably positive ones.”

He frowned. “Aunt?”

Dia’ayla came to a stop beside him, where he stood at the head of the bed. “Yes, aunt,” she said mildly. “She is married to my mother’s sister. Not all planets are as xenophobic as ones tainted by your father’s influence- some of them even seem to tolerate aliens like me.”

Arcann opened his mouth to snarl a retort, but caught himself at the very last second; he ducked his head quickly, and made a sound that seemed like he was choking on his own tongue as he bit back the words. She was right, she was absolutely right- Zakuul had been Valkorion’s own racist sanctuary, his disdain for outsiders and aliens burned down into the very bedrock of their society, and the Sith Empire before that was a seething mess of xenophobic violence and hate. He needed more than ever to not take every comment as a personal attack, no matter how hard the barbs seemed to sink beneath his skin. 

She seemed to take note of his silence, and when he risked looking up at her, it was possible the disdain in her expression had softened slightly. “You have injured yourself,” she said bluntly, placing a hand on his shoulder socket. He couldn’t hide the wince. “Either from the encounter itself, or from insisting on carrying Kol’aya out of some misplaced sense of chivalry.”

He started to argue that he couldn’t very well leave Kol’aya to the whims of the Zakuulan assassins, but instead the sound that came out of his mouth was something akin to a pained squeak as she pressed down. Her fingers did something unpleasant to the metal socket, and then a moment later he felt the equally unpleasant sensation of his arm detaching from his body. Arcann could only stare in shock as Dia’ayla calmly set his cybernetic arm down on the bed and turned back to his now empty shoulder socket. 

“A little warning might be nice,” he managed to croak.

“Don’t carry large weights for extended periods of time while still healing from a catastrophic injury,” she said. “Is that an appropriate warning?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Indeed.” 

He gritted his teeth as he felt her doing something to the implant- fiddling with the seals or tightening something, he had no idea. Kol’aya was right, he really did need to pay more attention to what people were doing to his body, because this? This was terrifying. 

She worked in silence, but after a minute or so, she sighed quietly. “You need not fear me,” she said. “No harm will befall you while you are under my care.”

He managed a shaky laugh. “Forgive me if I am dubious,” he said. “This is not the sort of situation I have any basis of reference for. I am entirely adrift.”

“I cannot imagine that any of us have experience with protecting and aiding an abdicated emperor,” she said. “Single planetary monarchs, perhaps, but nothing on quite such a scale as your own.” She paused. “But then, Kol’aya always was foolishly ambitious like that.” 

Arcann grunted. “Don’t speak about her like that.”

“I have nothing but the highest regard for your dear doctor. She has been a friend and colleague for many years now, and I look forward to many years more.”

He didn’t realise until now how much of the tension in his body was directly related to Kol’aya’s wellbeing; it actually hurt to relax. “She’s alright?”

She huffed out a breath through her nose, the sound almost a laugh. “No thanks to you,” she said; she had some kind of small drill in her hand, and it buzzed uncomfortably in his shoulder socket as she worked on whatever damage she had found. “Your Force healing is quite abysmal, I must say.” 

The world spun to a halt around him, and he had to grip the edge of the bed with his free hand. “I... what?”

“Your Force healing,” she said calmly, continuing to work. “You did quite a poor job of it, and it made it quite difficult to reverse- she was going to have quite the scar-”

“I can’t Force heal,” he said, and he hated how his voice shook. “That’s... I can’t do that, it’s not encouraged, we don’t-”

_Force healing wasn’t the skill of a warrior, it wasn’t worth a warrior’s time. Force healing was the realm of the Scions, deceivers and liars and hollow puppets, not the sort of skill a prince should learn. It was a sign of his weakness, a sign that he wasn’t the heir his father wanted, he was too soft to be a warrior, he was too weak to be an emperor, too pathetic to be a son-_

Dia’ayla brought him out of the panic attack rather abruptly, cracking his arm back into place and locking the clamps tight; he felt movement return to his fingers, and he was breathing hard as he clenched it into a fist. “At some point in the last hour or so,” she said quietly, “you drew upon the Force to heal Kol’aya. The imprint of it was etched into her cells and tissue, unmistakeable.”

He stared at her, agonised. “But I _can’t_ -”

“But you _did_.” 

Everything he knew about the world was upended, topsy-turvy and back to front. “I didn’t want her to die,” he whispered. 

Her expression finally softened noticeably, and her sigh was somewhat exasperated. “She’s not going to die,” she said. “But she’s going to need some time to recover. In the meantime, you need to learn how to heal people correctly without causing them permanent tissue damage from your clumsiness.”

Arcann blinked. “Beg pardon?” 

“Force healing,” Dia’ayla said calmly, stepping back. “Or did you think I gave you medical scrubs for the aesthetic?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you with very keen memories might remember Caliah from Ysaine's past- he was the pilot on the scavenger ship she worked on during the Great Galactic War, and featured in a chapter of "You Owe Me A Drink".


	20. Chapter 20

_Dathomir, the Quelli Sector, Outer Rim Territories_

“So, if I beat one of the lizards, does that mean I get their hat?”

Ru looked at Evie with the exasperated expression of a child who considers themselves to be in the presence of possibly the stupidest adult in existence, and she fought off a grin. “ _No_ ,” he said, one step short of rolling his eyes as he pointed to the game board on the floor between them once again, “if you land on their squares, you can challenge them-”

“And get their hats?” she teased.

“ _Evie!_ ”

“ _Ru!_ ” she mimicked, in exactly the same tone. When he started to pout, she reached across the board and tweaked his nose. “Ey, come on, I’m just sabo.”

He giggled, and his own paper hat started to slide off his head. “You talk funny, Evie,” he said.

“Oh ey, lah?” She tipped her hat at a jaunty angle, the paper crinkling under her hand. “I get an extra dice roll for that, aiyo!”

One of Ru’s many, many lizards chose that moment to attempt to eat the dice, while another went skittering away and under the bed, their paper crown sadly crunched underfoot as they went. Evie watched merrily as Ru tried to wrestle the colourful cube away from his pet, scolding it ferociously as he did, and she felt a pang of homesickness in her chest. Her two older sisters had five children between them, and it had been well over two years now since she’d seen any of her family back on Terminus.

Was the war affecting home, and were they all safe? She called home to her parents whenever she could, listening avidly as they filled her in on all the comings and goings of the family and the bar regulars, her mother complaining about her father burning the oil for the third time in a week when he made wontons, and her father complaining that her mother never washed his socks the way he liked. Sometimes, when she was really lucky, she’d get to see the extended family when she called, and it warmed her heart in a way nothing else did to hear the chorus of shrilly excited _‘Aunt Evie!’_ from the mob of exuberant niblings.

It was a lifetime away from where she was now, some kind of magician in training with no real direction, shunted from teacher to teacher as if no one knew what to do with her. She wasn’t upset about it, not really- it wasn’t like she’d had any direction back home either, and the life of an untrained wizard in the middle of a war was far from boring.

While Ru was still wrestling with his beloved pet for the precious dice, she reached over and plucked the crumpled paper crown from the floor, flattening it out as best she could before settling it at a jaunty angle on her head. She debated moving some of the pieces around on the board for a laugh, but dismissed it a moment later; Ru would take it far too seriously if she did, and the last thing she wanted to do was upset the little fellow. As she watched him scolding the lizard ferociously, waggling a finger at it while it flicked a tongue in the air, the intercom buzzed, and she heard Asmi stifle an ugly sounding cough.

“Y’all good, Auntie?” she called, looking up towards the roof of the cabin for want of anywhere else to direct her attention.

Asmi cleared her throat, sounding a little hoarse when she finally spoke. “I’m fine, thank you Miss Che,” she said, and Evie didn’t exactly want to call the lady a liar in front of her kid, but eh, sibei jialat. “Grandmaster Shan has requested you join them outside, if you are able to.”

She rolled her head to the side, looking over to see Ru staring at her with a very serious expression on his face. “I gotta skedaddle,” she said, and his lips twitched as if he wanted to smile at the ridiculous sounding word. “We can pick this up again, ey?”

He nodded, and she winked at him. “Good lad,” she said, climbing to her feet with a bounce. “Maybe check in with your ma, see if she need a drink?”

“She likes tea!”

“Yeah, liddat. Get her a tea.”

Ru went scampering past her without further conversation, leaving her alone with at least two prowling lizards; she was a city girl, even if the city she’d grown up in was kinda crowded and filthy, so she weren’t no expert on reptiles but she was pretty sure those big wrigglers were some kind of carnivore. It was a wonder the kid still had all his fingers.

She picked up her coat as she made her way to the airlock, tugging it on over her shoulders and flicking the ends of her hair out of the way; it was getting longer than she liked to keep it, but she didn’t exactly think finding a salon was a high priority on anyone’s list at the moment. Maybe she could hack at it later tonight with a knife in the galley or something.

She nudged the airlock controls with her elbow while she fixed her collar, and the seals disengaged with a whirring hiss, sending a blast of chilly, moist air into her face. It smelled wet and rotten, sort of like the way the swamps of Zakuul had smelled, but there was a sharper edge to it, hard to describe. The Grandmaster said it was something to do with the Force, something magic- never would’ve thought that magic might’ve had a smell.

Dathomir was a planet of oddities like that, though, full of vibrant and contrasting colours and buzzing energy that simmered beneath the skin. When they’d flown in earlier that day, the planet had looked mundane enough from orbit, with grey-blue oceans and white capped mountains, no major centres of civilization or notable space traffic; Holiday had told her there were people down below, folk who had their own magic and called their Force-users witches, and as with any planet with a breathable atmosphere and no tangible Republic or Imperial presence established, there were any number of pirate camps and smuggler boltholes scattered over the continents.

And then there were the rancors. Sapient rancors, specifically. She’d only ever seen the one rancor before, the heavily sedated mascot of the Ramas Rancors held in a pen during a finals match against the Terminosi Terrors, and that was wild enough. She didn’t want to think about what a smart one looked like.

She sauntered down the ramp, breathing in deeply as she stuffed her hands into her pockets; the ship was settled in a small grove halfway up a mountain, and the view was really something to take in. The trees were a bizarre mix of living and dead, with the dead ones bleached to a grey-white that looked like skeletal fingers clawing up from beneath the red earth; the living ones were heavy with thick green and purple leaves, with ropes of mossy vines weighing down the branches. A great many of the living trees bore wounds that bled deep red sap down their trunks, the sticky syrup attracting bugs and small creatures in swarms.

The earth beneath her feet was a rich red, almost thick like clay, and there was enough of a chill in the air that her breath coiled like steam before her face as she walked. The sun had moved over their position and was sitting on the other side of the mountain, and despite nightfall being some hours away their ship was already in shadow. Evie moved through the trees for a few minutes, following the handful of markers that the others had set down to indicate the path from the ship to the vantage point, and she realised halfway down the trail that she hadn’t brought her lightsaber with her.

“Shit,” she grumbled, kicking at a pebble with her boot and squinting at the red smear of mud it left over her boot. Hopefully the Grandmaster wouldn’t wanna scold her for it again. She weren’t real good at focusing on all this shit a Jedi needed to remember every minute of every day.

She came across the others on the edge of a vast cliff, the mountain falling away dramatically before collecting itself into the foothills like the rumpled folds of a blanket hanging off the end of a bed. The trees below grew progressively less green, the skeletal fingers stretching towards the sky like a horde of undead, until the foothills evened out to a vast, red desert that stretched away towards the horizon. The sight of the desert was so bizarre while she stood here so close to the snowline, but that seemed to sum up Dathomir succinctly.

Lieutenant Iresso was lying flat along the ground, a sniper rifle nestled on a stand as he surveyed the ground far below with the scope. The odd scientist Tharan was crouched beside him, looking far too sweaty and nervous about the proximity of the cliff, and he held a little holographic tablet in one hand with Holiday beaming up at him.

Grandmaster Shan sat with her eyes closed and her hands on her knees, her back unbelievably straight; Evie had no idea how she did it. She wandered over, trying to make enough noise that she wouldn’t take anyone by surprise, but Holiday turned in her direction before the others did.

“Oh, Miss Che!” she chirped merrily. “I’m ever so glad you were able to get here so quickly. It’s just so dangerous out here in the wilds- it gives me the shivers just thinking about it!”

“It’s all good, Holiday,” Iresso called patiently, but he didn’t move from his perch or look away from whatever quarry he was hunting below. “Rancors don’t do well in the mountains, we’ll be fine.”

“Oh, but there’s pirates and brigands and witches! Not to mention all the nasty little critters the rancors like to eat! Why, it makes my circuits overload even trying to contemplate all the nasty, terrible things that could be waiting-”

“Holiday, dearest,” Tharan said in a strained voice.

She covered her mouth with her hands, almost comically so.

Evie shook her head, stifling a laugh. “Kancheong spider, you got Evie now lah,” she said, rocking back on her heels in a rolling motion as she waited for Grandmaster Shan to acknowledge her too. “Ain’t nothing to fear with Evie here.” When nobody spoke up again, she raised her eyebrows. “Ey, you make a girl paiseh.”

“There’s no need to be embarrassed, Miss Che,” Grandmaster Shan said, finally opening her eyes. She gestured towards where Iresso lay against the edge of the cliff. “Felix, if you’d be so kind as to show Evie what it is we’ve called her to help with.”

Felix rolled onto his hip, waving for Evie to join him on the ground; somewhat dubiously, she wandered over to the edge of the immense drop, taking a moment to peer over before dropping onto the red stone beside him. Good thing she weren’t afraid of heights, because that one was a doozy. The sniper rifle was resting on the rock between them, and he handed her a pair of macrobinoculars that Tharan handed to him. “Look down towards the foothills,” Felix said, pointing in the line of sight his rifle was aimed towards, “right over there towards where that large one sort of connects to the rest of the range with that ridge.”

She weren’t up on proper geographical terms, but the description was relatively easy to follow, especially with his instructions and his pointing. Evie scanned the hills with the macrobinoculars, finding the rogue hill after a moment of searching- there was indeed a thin sort of spine of stone that connected it to the larger mountains, and that was easy enough trace with her eyes. “I see it,” she said.

“Good. Look towards the base of the hills just below it, and keep your head down.”

The grainy blue filters couldn’t mask the moment the rocky outcrops gave way to smooth hewn stone, the sides of the hill suddenly turning to perfectly measured terraces, each side worn and chipped from centuries of exposure to the elements. “Wah lau, is a ziggurat, lah?” she asked excitedly. “This that vault then, ey?”

“Keep looking,” Felix said grimly.

The uniformly sized ledges descended down the mountainside- and she had to wonder now what came first, the mountain or the ziggurat, whether landslides had half claimed the structure or whether it’d been built into the side of the mountain to begin with- and every now and then there were pillars with scarcely visible runes carved into them, whatever message they had borne almost blasted clean away by all the years of rain and snow and dust from the desert.

A flicker of movement drew her attention, and she almost yelped in surprise when a well armed and well armoured individual went walking through her field of vision; recovering herself from the momentary lapse, she looked again, and saw that they were not alone. There were at least two dozen such soldiers patrolling the lower tiers of the ziggurat, and as she made her way down to find a yawning opening at the base of the mountain framed by two colossal stone creatures of indeterminate species, she spotted a pair of red-armoured individuals carrying staffs, their helmets tapering to flat-bladed spikes atop their heads.

“Who’re the dudes in the fetish gear?” she asked, staring at them avidly.

“Those are members of the Imperial Guard,” Felix said, and he sounded rather unhappy with this revelation. “Highly trained assassins, brainwashed to hell and back. Able to kill Force users, or take on entire platoons by themselves. They used to serve Emperor Vitiate, and most of them got wiped out during the Revanite crisis- didn’t think Acina would’ve risked bringing them back into use, to be honest.”

“Why? Sound pretty useful, lah.”

“Useful isn’t really how I’d describe them,” Tharan said from behind them, his voice still strained.

“Their training methods are quite brutal,” Holiday said in her usual cheerful tone, piping up from behind as well. “My dear Tharan and I were asked to help decrypt some of their databanks on Yavin during the campaign, and oh dear my, they were not nice people, not at all-”

There was a crackling noise, and then Asmi’s voice came through the holocomm built into Holiday’s little mobile station. “There are several more ships holding position in orbit now,” she said, her voice a little breathless in a way that Evie was coming to associate with the Jedi Master overextending herself with her powers. From the way Felix stirred from his position and glanced at the holocomm, she wasn’t alone in her suspicions. “I’m maintaining the shield for now, but if Holiday could assist-”

“I’m on it, Asmi darling,” Holiday cooed, and the little pink hologram vanished from sight. Tharan sighed shakily and set the device down on the ground, wiping his brow with the back of his hand.

Evie climbed back onto her haunches, crouching near the edge of the cliff with the macrobinoculars held loosely in her hand. “So I guess we’re not getting into that vault thing then,” she said. “That’s what the fancy ziggurat thing is, eh?”

“How can you sit so casually that close to the edge?” Tharan said faintly.

Evie winked and pretended to fire off a blast from each hand like they were blasters, mimicking blowing smoke away from the tips. He rolled his eyes in response, and made a point to crawl further away from where Felix was crouched on the cliff side.

“We are not getting into the temple, no,” Satele said quietly, and Evie glanced over at her. Satele was watching her carefully, and Evie felt an immediate urge to squirm awkwardly like a schoolgirl being asked to explain her late arrival. “If there are any artifacts belonging to the late Emperor, the Sith have likely acquired them before us. The new question to address, is what precisely they are doing here.”

The question seemed like a trap. Evie glanced at Felix and Tharan for aid, but neither of them were looking at her. “Err, they’re here for the trinkets, lah?” she said hesitantly.

“Evidently- but why now? What do the Sith hope to gain right now from this facility, only a few weeks after Lieutenant Iresso’s condition diverged so seriously?”

Felix grunted, the sound disgusted and grumpy.

“My apologies, Lieutenant,” Satele said. “But the point remains- it stands to reason that, for the Sith to have placed a starmap within his mind in the first place, they had the full locations of the late Emperor’s vaults on hand for some time. And yet they arrive here now, at the same time as us. Why do you think that is?”

Stars, this Jedi shit was far more cerebral than she was used to. “Honestly, Auntie? I dunno.”

Satele looked like she was fighting not to laugh. “I appreciate your honesty, Miss Che,” she said. “You have within you a good and earnest heart- but there is a lot more you can be doing with it than just magic tricks and sleight of hand.”

She rubbed at her neck, feeling the faint burn of something. Wasn’t sure if it was happy embarrassment at the praise, or proper embarrassment at the chiding.

“We don’t know why the Sith are here,” Satele continued, “but the fact that they have arrived so closely in sync with Lieutenant Iresso’s collapse can only indicate that something foul is afoot. To that end, we need you to investigate.”

Evie waited for her to keep going, or at least explain what she meant in more detail, but Satele seemed content to leave it at that; she blinked, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but try as she might she couldn’t conjure up anything that Satele could have meant other than- “You want me to go running around down there?” she asked incredulously.

Felix snorted, and Satele cast him an amused look. “Not quite,” she said, gesturing for her to join her on the ground. Evie jumped up to her feet from the crouching position, rolling her hips for a moment and letting the joints crack, before crossing the short space to where Satele was kneeling. “While it would be far too dangerous for you to physically infiltrate the temple, you do have means at your disposal that are more... discreet.”

Evie frowned slowly. “You want me to snoop in their heads?” she asked in disbelief.

There was a glimmer of something in Satele’s eyes. “Do you think you can?”

“I dunno,” she said dubiously, leaning up on her knees to eye the distant figures as they swarmed all over the ziggurat, “I’ve never really tried to do it from this far away before.”

“Then how do you know you can’t do it?” Satele said, her lips quirking with a smile. She had both hands resting on her knees, and she looked so comfortable and at peace despite the bizarre energy of the planet and the fact that she was kneeling in the dirt, that Evie had to admit that she was impressed. She just felt grubby. “One of our greatest challenges in life is to overcome the limitations we set upon ourselves. Through the Force, all things are possible, and the only thing preventing us from reaching our full potential is our own hesitation.”

“That’s a real fancy way of saying that I’m a failure if I can’t immediately do it.”

To her surprise, Satele actually chuckled. She was startled enough that she grinned in response, but she stopped herself from posing with finger guns. “Not quite,” Satele said, clearly amused. “It’s more intended as a reminder that you are capable of far more than you give yourself credit for, padawan. You have an extraordinary potential, and you should not let doubt rule your choices.”

Evie shrugged. “I dunno if it’s doubt so much as just a reality check, lah.”

Satele held her hands out towards her. “Come closer,” she said, watching as Evie scooched across the dirt until their knees were touching. She reached out and took her hands in hers, and Evie could feel the callouses on her fingers, a sign that the woman before her wasn’t a meek and mild scholar, but had seen her fair share of hard battle. “Close your eyes,” Satele said, and Evie complied. “Now, relax. Concentrate on your breathing, and let your mind drift as the Force wills it.”

Easier said than done; Evie breathed in deeply, but her mind definitely wasn’t drifting so much as it was darting around like a hummingbird on stims. How was she supposed to reach the minds of people over a kilometre away, if not more? How many of them were there? She’d only ever done this in card games at the pub up until Satele had asked her to do it on Felix weeks ago, and now she was gonna use it in some kind of spy maneuver? Who had built the temple anyway? Had the rancors built it? Man, now she was thinking of a rancor in a hardhat with a little slide measure, and she was going to laugh-

“Concentrate,” Satele said again, her fingers tightening on hers. “Just breathe.”

Her fingers were warm. The shadow engulfing them was cool, but the day was pleasant. She could feel the mild dampness of the earth beneath her knees. She could feel her heartbeat in her ears. She was definitely not thinking of rancors forming a safety committee.

She gasped, a sense of warmth and power flowing into her where Satele held her hands in hers. “Concentrate,” Satele murmured once again, and this time the Force was the only thing Evie _could_ concentrate on. She could feel so much more, in a way she’d never even considered seeing the world; it was like she’d been blind her whole life, and only now was she being given the gift of sight. “Let the Force guide you.”

“What’s happening?” she croaked.

She could feel Satele’s thumbs brushing slowly across her knuckles, as if to ground her. “It is a form of battle meditation,” she said quietly. “I offer my strength to you, so that you might use it in your quest. Focus, and trust in the Force.”

Focus. She needed to focus. She needed to... she needed to see what the Sith were doing in the temple. Stars, they were so far away.

“You have seen them once, already,” Satele whispered. “See them again.”

She knew she was still kneeling in the dirt and holding onto Satele’s hands, but she also knew that she was soaring through the air like a bird, arrowing down and down and down before coming to a screaming halt before the ziggurat. She felt her pulse spike, and she felt her breathing grow hard, but she could still feel Satele’s fingers clinging hard to her, anchoring her, soothing her.

The ziggurat was so much more impressive from ground level, a massive edifice of crumbling red stone that seemed to have been birthed from the mountains around it. There were two humongous pillars alongside the stone-carved creatures, some big obelisk type structure, that framed the entrance to the temple, and they bore ancient carvings in a language Evie couldn’t even begin to comprehend. There were far more soldiers than she’d expected from her initial scan, and she flinched almost instinctively when two marched right by her, but none of them seemed to notice her presence.

“What do you see?”

She swallowed nervously, looking around. “There’s... there’s a couple of transports, and one of those fancy black ships,” she said, hoping against hope that the soldiers and sith around her wouldn’t hear her. Still no one acknowledged her presence, and she took a moment to still her nerves before continuing. “The kind of ship the lords use, ey? Looks like a bat.”

“What about the temple?”

She turned around again, surveying the entrance and the obelisks that seemed to serve as warnings. “The temple doors are open,” she said, skirting around some pallets that seemed to contain earth-moving equipment. “There’s some crates around the place, but it doesn’t seem to be full of gold, if that’s what you were hoping for.”

She could feel Satele smile. “Can you see who might be in charge? The person who might own the black ship?”

Evie turned in place, looking over the patrolling guards; as she assessed the crowds, a woman came marching from within the depths of the temple accompanied by another one of the Imperial Guard, and-

“Simi sai,” she whispered, squinting at the third woman in the party.

“Miss Che?”

“There’s like, this woman in a red cape and booty shorts? And she’s all, like, _ang mo_ super pale.” She watched the three of them draw closer, taking in the woman’s appearance. “Big fuck off staff on her back, wicked sharp blades on it. Real feral looking.”

There was a sense of urgency in Satele’s voice as she responded. “Evie, that woman is a Dathomiri witch. They have a mastery of the Force that is beyond anything either the Jedi or the Sith are capable of. She is dangerous. Keep your distance.”

“Ey, lah, I ain’t gonna poke the bug nest.”

She drifted around the perimetre, keeping a sensible distance from the three figures, but it seemed more than likely they were the ones she was hunting. She tried to focus on the human woman stalking in the lead, her sleek armour black and red and her face ridged with ugly pink lesions that seemed partly decorative and definitely deliberate.

She took a deep breath. Satele thought she could do this, and she had to at least try.

It seemed easier if she reached out a hand towards them, mimicking the same gesture she’d make if she was physically within range of them. She concentrated on the scarred woman, and tried to will herself through the subconscious barriers in her mind.

It was hard- _stars_ , was it hard. It was like trying to shuffle carefully through a narrow cavern lined with impossibly sharp shards of glass and ice, protruding from the walls and dangling from the ceiling, floating and twisting and always moving to impede her progress; but it was also like those very same shards were made of smoke and mist, their form always shifting and reappearing in the most inconvenient places. She’d never had to struggle so hard to just skim through the surface thoughts- she hated to think how difficult it would be to dive deeper into this woman’s mind.

She took a ragged breath, and a name slipped past her lips. “Malora.”

Satele’s fingers tightened on hers briefly. “Who is Malora?” she murmured.

Evie fought to keep her footing within Malora’s mind, and she could feel sweat beading on her brow; it was an odd sensation, the chill air cooling her skin on her body while she stood over a kilometre away in another woman’s thoughts. “A lord,” she said, gritting her teeth. “A dark lord,” she corrected.

“You’re alright. Take your time.”

She didn’t feel like she had a lot of time. “Darth,” she said, and the woman paused, putting a hand up to her head. _Shit_. “Mystery darth? No, Darth of Mysteries? What does that mean?”

“Evie?”

“I think she’s pushing me out,” she said, a headache building abruptly in her temples.

She heard Satele take a sharp breath. “Does she know you’re there?”

Evie shook her head. “I don’t- I don’t think so.”

“Try one of the others. Don’t risk her seeing or hurting you.”

Darth Malora had stopped entirely, one hand on her hip and another raised to her head, and Evie lurched back out of her mind as quickly as she could without drawing attention to herself. The Imperial Guard came up beside her, one hand on her elbow as if to support her as they leaned in close, and after taking a moment to catch her breath, Evie decided they would make a good target. After all, hadn’t one of the others said they weren’t Force users? She’d have far more luck with someone who didn’t have powers to resist her.

Righting herself, she reached out towards the Imperial Guard- and hit a wall so dense that she actually felt her body jerk backwards, only held upright by the firm clasp of Satele’s hands on her. She had a sensation of cold, cold white eyes- not white with blindness- staring intently at her, and the Imperial Guard’s head snapped around instantly to face the place where Evie’s projected self stood.

“Evie!”

She opened her eyes to find Satele kneeling over her, her face clasped in her hands. “Evie!” she repeated, looking urgently into her eyes and breathing a sigh of relief when she met her gaze. “What happened?”

“We’ve got movement,” Felix called, an edge to his voice. “They’re pointing up into the hills, they know we’re up here somewhere.”

Evie was covered in cold sweat, and she felt like she’d just run a marathon and then some. “She saw me,” she croaked, her heart hammering in her throat.

Satele helped her to her feet. “Who? Darth Malora?”

She shook her head. “The guard with her,” she said, stumbling slightly as she tried to get her balance; Satele steadied her, squeezing her hand as a comfort. “She knew straight away-”

“It’s alright,” Satele said, hooking an arm around her back, “it’s alright.”

Evie was too light-headed to argue any further, and they rushed back down the trail towards the ship without further argument. There was an eerie scream as a tiefighter soared overheard, clearly hunting for their location, and then another flew past in the opposite direction. “Holiday, dear,” Tharan shouted, fumbling for the holocomm as he ran ahead of Evie and Satele.

She couldn’t see the pink hologram, but she could hear her voice clearly enough. “Oh, hurry Tharan! Asmi is struggling!”

They burst into the clearing and thundered up the ramp to the ship, with a screeching metallic symphony of tiefighters in the sky above them as their soundtrack. The engines were already idling, and Evie felt the ramp shift beneath her feet as they ran, the ship already lifting into the air in preparation of their escape.

The others all ran to their posts, while Evie slumped down against the wall the moment she was safely within the main hold of the ship. Her stomach lurched with the first few moments of weightlessness as they soared skyward, and then she did her best to zone out as the aerial acrobatics of the inevitable battle against the Imperials began.

It was some time later when she realised they’d finally levelled out, and she opened her eyes to find the craft at peace- or as much as it could be at peace after having come so close to engaging with an Imperial fleet. Felix was in the process of assisting Asmi to their quarters, the woman looking far too wan despite the bright yellow of her skin, while Ru fluttered about them anxiously. She could hear Tharan and Holiday talking on the bridge, Tharan’s lower rumble countered by the concerned trill of his holographic wife.

And beside her, kneeling in meditation as she had in the dirt on Dathomir, was Satele. As if sensing that she’d returned to her senses, Satele opened her eyes as well, meeting her gaze. An immediate flare of concern appeared in her face, and she touched a hand to hers where it rested on the floor. “Evie,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”

Well. She wasn’t expecting _that_.

Her confusion must have showed on her face, because Satele smiled ruefully. “I pushed you into doing something incredibly dangerous,” she said. “It has been a very long time since I have taken a student, and I... I admit, I am out of touch. You risked your own safety on nothing more than my say so, and you deserve better than that.”

Evie cocked her head to the side. “Did you just call me your student, Auntie?” she asked.

Satele’s smile broadened. “You’ve been somewhat pushed from pillar to post for the last few years, my dear,” she said. “I don’t doubt that Master Ranos and Commander Xo did their best to offer you guidance, but you deserve to be treated like any other Jedi padawan. You deserve proper training.”

“That’s...” She rubbed awkwardly at her neck, feeling her cheeks burning even as she grinned bashfully. “That’s... paiseh, you make me all cringe, Auntie.”

Satele’s brow crinkled slightly in confusion, but the smile remained. “I’m going to assume that’s a good thing,” she said, amusement in her tone. “Does this arrangement suit you?”

“Ey lah, it’s amazing!” She leaned forward without thinking and hugged her, only realising when Satele stiffened in surprise that she probably shouldn’t have done that. “Oh ey, I guess... that was pretty dumb, lah?”

To her surprise, Satele actually laughed. “It’s alright, Evie,” she said. “I wouldn’t ask you to try and change your, ah, enthusiastic nature. It serves you well- and stars know, we need every weapon available to us if we are to come across members of the Dark Council on our quest for the vaults.”

Evie blinked. “Dark Council members?”

“Yes- Darth Malora is the master of the Sphere of Mysteries, one of the twelve most powerful Sith in the entire Empire. You undermined one of the most dangerous women in the galaxy with next to no training, so imagine what you will be capable of with a little practice.”

Evie could only stare. “Oh,” was all she said.

* * *

_Dromund Kaas, the Dromund System, Outer Rim Territories_

“What about the Minister of Defense? Has his office responded to our request?”

Thessa’s assistant shook his head. “The department politely informed me when I last enquired that things were still in somewhat of upheaval with Darth Iniuria’s official elevation, and that they would respond in a timely manner.”

She grimaced. “A timely manner would have been three months ago,” she said caustically, rubbing at her eyes. “Very well. Table that one for now. I’ll revise the budgets again and call a meeting of the sector chiefs when done- please send an update out advising them to expect that in the next few days.”

“Margarethe Besson from the Nar Shaddaa office has already sent through another three requests for renewed funding.”

“Of course she has,” Thessa said, trying and failing not to sound sarcastic. “Did she say what it was for this time? Does the agency need to be refurbished in the current season fashion?”

“I- she, ah, didn’t say, Minister.”

She really needed to reign in her temper; he didn’t deserve this. “Can you message the finance team and tell them I’ll need to see them today,” she said, trying to moderate her tone. “I can make time this afternoon if they’re able to accommodate it.”

Her assistant shifted uncomfortably. “Ah- Minister? You are fully booked this afternoon-”

“Keeper doesn’t need me present for the induction of the new intake class. He’ll be fine. Let finance know that I can meet them then.”

“I’ll make the arrangements, Minister.”

She rubbed at her eyes again. She’d been at the office since before sunrise this morning- or as much of a sunrise as Kaas City was capable of- and she wasn’t likely to get home until after dark. She was so, so tired, and it just felt like there was never an opportunity for her to get enough rest.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been home early enough to have dinner with Vector and Arram.

Thessa exhaled slowly. “And please message my husband and let him know I’ll be late tonight,” she said, the words no longer possessing the sting they might’ve had years before. She was used to the misery of work keeping her away from her family by now. “Tell him... I’m sorry.”

Her assistant was spared the awkwardness of having to respond by the sharp bleat of her holocomm, and Thessa sighed in exasperation. “I thought we had this set to divert?” she said, reaching to answer it.

“We do, Minister.”

She grimaced. The only way divert could be overridden was if the person on the other end of the call was using higher security codes than her own. And for someone to have higher security codes than the literal Minister for Intelligence?

Meant a member of the Dark Council.

“You’re dismissed,” she said, gesturing for him to make for the door. She watched his retreating back as the call continued to ping, waiting until he had reached the exit and left her to her privacy before reaching to accept it. It wasn’t good to keep a Sith waiting, but it was also not a good idea to give a Sith any reason to believe they were at risk of eavesdropping.

The call connected, and a red robed figure appeared in the air above her desk. A member of the reconstituted Imperial Guard, who even through the gritty blue connection of the footage, was almost painfully pale to look upon. She wore no helmet, and her stark white hair was pulled back into a severe braid, likely for ease of wear when she did have to don the intimidating bladed helm. She cocked her head to the side, her eerie white eyes burning through the vast distance of the call to strike right into her gut. “Minister,” the woman said, her voice clipped and clear in the perfectly groomed Imperial accent.

Thessa resisted the urge to sneer at her. “Captain Duun,” she said, her tone as unengaging as she could make it, “to what do I owe this honour?”

Bree-zanna Duun, an Echani warrior acclaimed for her martial artistry even amongst her own people, had very briefly served in Sith Intelligence in the years after the Revanite crisis when no one had quite known what to do with the surviving guards. Thessa had found her to be uncomfortably violent, unthinkingly zealous and utterly lacking in basic interpersonal skills- which seemed to be par the course for the brain-washed ranks of the Emperor’s personal assassins, but it didn’t really make her that suitable for much of the more delicate operations conducted by agents under her command. She’d been curt, disrespectful, almost borderline rebellious, and it had clearly chafed at her having to serve under masters she considered unworthy.

With Acina allowing Commander Hesker to restructure the Imperial Guard several years ago, Duun had leapt at the chance to leave Intelligence, and Thessa had gladly signed off on the transfer. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t understand how suffocating working for Intelligence could be, but she also knew it wasn’t always the best fit for people’s... _talents_.

Nonetheless, she hadn’t really been sad to see the back of the other woman. She got the distinct impression Duun felt the same way about her.

“I bring word from Darth Malora,” Duun said, her tone crisp and cold, a fitting match for her eyes and her entire demeanour. “The mission on Dathomir has been compromised.”

That was not the best news to hear, but the fact that Malora had sent a lackey instead of calling herself was promising. “How so?” she asked, immediately bringing up her files on the Sith expedition, taking note of the three Intelligence agents assigned to the operation in various roles. There was one outstanding report waiting for her, filed in the last hour- it must have come in while she was in the meeting. She discreetly opened it and started to scan it quickly. “Was the site unsuitable for excavation?”

“There were _Jedi_ ,” Duun spat, a flare of venom in her voice. “None of the preliminary assessments provided by your department indicated there were Jedi within a dozen systems of Dathomir, and yet-”

“Is her Lordship safe?” Thessa interrupted. “Was there an attack?”

A rather significant crack of thunder rolled through the air, the lightning flash casting Duun in even more stark shades of white. “My lord, thankfully, is safe,” Duun said coldly, “no thanks to your people.”

So it was going to be like that. Thessa folded her hands before her on the table. “If that will be all, captain,” she said. “I will await more detailed reports from your team-”

“Do not dismiss _me_ , Minister! How will you account for your failure to adequately anticipate an attack of this scale-”

“Do not interrupt _me_ , captain,” Thessa retorted. “I’ll remind you that I officially outrank you, and I will not be drawn into making hasty conclusions without any information that will then be used against me as further criticism of some imagined failure. Either explain to me the problem, or get off the line and write a damned report.” When Duun did not respond, Thessa fought the urge to throw her hands into the air in frustration. “How many Jedi, then? What did they do?”

“There were three that we have been able to ascertain,” Duun said, her tone positively glacial. “But it is likely there are more. Given the incompetence of your department, there could be veritable scores of Jedi hiding in the border wilds, and we would be none the wiser until they burst from their boltholes like the vermin they are.”

In approximately three seconds, she was going to hang up on her. Thessa pointedly looked away, turning to her screens to explicitly express her disdain and disinterest. “Are you here to offer wild conjecture as if it were fact, Captain Duun, or are you going to admit you are merely wasting my time?”

“Do you often act so casual towards blatant threats to the security of our empire? Or is the suggestion that you have overlooked secret Jedi colonies too much for your pride?”

Thessa scarcely even looked up from her screen. “If the Republic had secret colonies of Jedi, we would know about them,” she said bluntly. “We have conclusive evidence that the Tython colony has been abandoned for several months at least, possibly years, and our contacts within the Alliance have not been able to find any indication that the Jedi Council members on Odessen are maintaining other cells.”

“Darth Malora believes-”

“With all respect to her lordship, Darth Malora is the master of the Sphere of Mysteries, and I can conclusively tell her there is no mystery about the disappearance of the Jedi. Zakuul killed them, and far more efficiently than the Empire ever did.”

The woman on screen thinned her lips in evident displeasure. “Her lordship will not be pleased with your dismissal,” she said icily. “And I trust you will be more discreet in your criticism of a Dark Lord in our next conversation.”

She’d pulled rank and it still wasn’t working. This woman was insufferable. “If Darth Malora sees fit to instruct me on how to conduct the affairs of my department, then I will kindly invite her to raise any concerns she has with Darth Zhorrid,” Thessa said. “I’m sure _my_ master will be more than happy to correct any misunderstandings your master might have about interfering in another Sith’s sphere of influence.”

The woman hissed like a feral cat and disconnected, the sharp crack of the line cutting out mirrored by the flash of lightning from beyond the office window; the distant rattle of thunder came a few seconds later, and Thessa put her head in her hands and breathed out aggressively between her teeth.

She hated it. She hated every insincere, arrogant moment of peacocking and violence that was needed just to get a single conversation finished. Layers upon layers of threats and counter-threats and one-upmanship, verbal maneuvers that would put the Houses of Csilla to shame, it was so exhausting. Just once, just one day, she would love to be allowed to do her job without the interference of other people’s egos.

That seemed to be an impossibility.

She let herself sit like that for a few minutes, so close to being burned out entirely; eventually, she drew in a deep breath, straightening again and rubbing at her eyes as she pulled out a small mirror from her desk. She checked her hair and her face, trying to look at least marginally professional and not half drunk from lack of sleep, before setting the mirror aside and reaching for her signal scrambler. Connecting it to the holocomm, she proceeded to enter a series of codes, each more complicated than the last.

After a long pause, it began to ring.

It did not ring for long. It had scarcely begun to chime the second ring when it connected, and a figure appeared clad in a nondescript grey and black uniform. On their breast was embroidered an insignia, a triangle containing a three pointed star that on closer inspection appeared to be three narrow eyes. Thessa was not looking at the insignia, however, for she was already well acquainted with it.

She’d helped design it, after all. “Raina,” she said quietly.

Raina, as always, looked torn between hesitant longing and awkward embarrassment as she refused to make eye contact over the call. “Minister,” she said, and Thessa sighed internally at the title in place of her name, “you know there are strict protocols in place that are supposed to prevent you contacting us from your office-”

“I need to speak to Ardun,” she said, without preamble.

Raina quite visibly hesitated. “We cannot risk a connection between you and the agency,” she tried again, but Thessa interrupted her.

“Get me Ardun. _Now_.”

It was probably just her imagination, but she was certain that Raina paled. “One moment,” she said, a slight stutter in her words, and she vanished from visuals. Thessa pinched the bridge of her nose, breathing hard as she fought to control her nerves; Raina was right, she wasn’t supposed to call the agency directly, especially not from her office, but... but what? She had a hunch? An urge? A desperate need to take out her frustration on someone?

She didn’t have time to ponder her own moral failings, because the line clicked again, and Ardun Kothe appeared before her. He looked as he always did, in his ragged old robes that seemed to hint at his past without committing to it fully; his hair looked thinner, and his face did too. She supposed it had been over a year now since she’d last seen him, after all. “Thessa,” he said, and he sounded as tired as he looked, “you know we’re not supposed to-”

“Does the Republic have secret outposts of Jedi that I’m not aware of?” she asked, because she didn’t have time for this argument.

Ardun paused carefully. “I don’t have a complete reckoning of Imperial Intelligence’s current knowledge off hand,” he said evasively. “So I’m not sure what you might already be aware of-”

“ _Ardun_.”

He sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. “You know I can’t give up that intel,” he said quietly.

It burned in her, something hard and sharp and incredulous. “And yet you have asked the same of me, both you and James, for- for _literally_ a decade now-”

“Thessa-”

“Don’t interrupt me!” she snarled. “You rely on me to betray my government, in the vague hope it will save lives, and by keeping me in the dark and refusing to provide me with critical intelligence, you instead risk a greater retaliation. I cannot control the Dark Council’s responses if I cannot anticipate them!”

Ardun’s brow was crinkled, as if deep in thought. “Was this... prompted by anything in particular?” he asked, just as slippery as always. For an intelligence commander, he could be very bad at lying. “Any particular incidents?”

Thessa rubbed aggressively at her forehead; she should’ve taken some painkillers before starting the call. “There was a brief interaction on Dathomir between Darth Malora’s forces and an unknown Jedi presence,” she started to say, and Ardun visibly relaxed.

“Oh, well, that’s easy enough to clear up- there’s no Jedi presence that I’m aware of in that sector-”

“That wasn’t my question, and you know it!” she snapped. “If you won’t tell me where the Jedi are hiding, I cannot warn you when there are scheduled Imperial operations in the area. I cannot anticipate the response of the Imperial military, and take steps to seed my people into the ranks to minimise the damage. If you won’t tell me, people are going to _die_ , Ardun. _Your_ people.”

He paused for a long moment, clearly considering his options. Finally he sighed softly. “I’ll speak to James,” he said. “We’ll send you... something.”

“That would be appreciated,” she said flatly.

Ardun grimaced. “And, I’m sure I don’t need to reiterate, it’s in everyone’s best interests if you would refrain from making direct contact with the agency without the proper protocols in place-”

“Stop talking down to me, and stop manipulating me, Ardun,” she said. “If you aren’t interested in treating me like an equal partner in this enterprise- and, I might add, far more at risk than yourselves-, then I have no interest in continuing this arrangement.”

His expression dropped. “Thessa,” he began, but she cut him off.

“Just because you can pronounce it correctly doesn’t mean you can address me so informally,” she said. “I’ll expect those files by this evening Kaas time.”

She disconnected, not interested in continuing the argument further. Her hands were shaking, and she felt angry in a way she hadn’t felt in a long, long time. It was hot and restless under her skin, sloshing around inside of her like boiling water; when she pressed a hand to her forehead, her skin felt flushed.

She didn’t doubt for a moment that Ardun- and James, by extension- thought they were doing what was best for everyone, but she was utterly sick of that including her. Too many people controlled the strings of her life, even without the Castellan Restraints in place to physically manipulate her, and she was tired of it. She was tired of being lied to, tired of being used, tired of people making decisions for her.

Her holocomm began to buzz again, and she groaned from beneath her hand, collapsing back slowly into the chair and staring at it maliciously. It couldn’t have been Ardun calling her back so soon, but she wouldn’t put it past James to be ringing to berate her. Or maybe it was Duun ringing again to whine at her about Malora not being prioritised above all else.

She let it ring twice, three times, then a fourth. She stared at it.

She breathed out from between her teeth, then leaned forward and accepted the call- and blinked. “Thake?” she asked incredulously.

In the air above the desk, looking alarmingly ragged and bearing injuries to indicate he had very recently been involved in some kind of fight, Thake grinned savagely. “Hello, darling,” he said hoarsely, the words slurred together. “You didn’t call for my birthday.”

She stared, her mouth hanging open as she tried to form an intelligent thought. “You- it’s been five years!” she spluttered, trying to latch onto something- _anything_ \- normal about this situation. “You haven’t _called_ , you haven’t _written_ \- I have a _son_ , and you’ve never even met him-”

Thake pursed his lips in a tutting gesture, shaking his head as if in disapproval. “That’s not the best opening we could have hoped for, but no matter.” A dribble of blood ran from the corner of his mouth, a dark line against the pale blue of the hologram. “I’ve got news for you, my dear Thessa.”

“Where have you even _been?_ I’ve tried to keep track of you, but I- there were rumours that you were involved in the attack on Zakuul’s palace, but you couldn’t have been, it’s- even you wouldn’t be that stupid-”

He held up a hand to interrupt her. “I’m sorry to cut this delightful little reunion short, but my time is limited,” he said. “Only a matter of time before the commandos find me again.”

She hesitated. “Commandos? Thake, are you... in Chiss space?”

He had a hand inside his jacket, as if he was holding onto a wound, but as she watched, he pulled it out with a flask clasped tight in his fingers, taking a large swig with a wince before tucking it away again. “I know about Darth Ouzal’s holocrons,” he said, and now she wasn’t sure if the slurring was from the alcohol or the pain. “Everyone does. Chiss do.”

Darth Ouzal, he was... _oh no_. “Darth Ouzal was Vitiate’s personal curator,” she said quietly. “He mapped out the vaults. Thake, what have you done?”

“Nothing your Sith overlords weren’t already doing,” he said, winking salaciously at her. “Just made it a little more fun.”

 _There were Jedi_ , Duun’s voice hissed in her ear, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. “Thake,” she repeated, “what did you do?”

He beamed. “It’s not a treasure hunt anymore, it’s a treasure race. The Sith and the Chiss and Zakuul and pirates and CEOs and-”

“You _sold_ the locations of the most dangerous items in the galaxy?”

“I didn’t do it for the money. I did it because it’s funny.” He made a weak attempt at doing finger guns, but it was possible his right arm was broken, because it didn’t really seem to want to cooperate.

She was shaking her head slowly, a sense of growing horror blooming within her. “Thake,” she said, her voice scarcely above a whisper, “you’ve endangered billions- no, _trillions_ of lives-

“But I got you a present!” With that, he turned to the side with a flourish, and she realised for the first time that there was a young woman behind him. She was handcuffed to a chair, but somehow managed to make it look both regal and insufferable, not a hair out of place on her head as she glared straight ahead. “And, by the way, real bad form mentioning another kid. Just real bad timing all round.”

The young woman in the chair was in that awkward place between childhood and adulthood, her features still soft and youthful and her height intimidating even in the confines of the chair. It was clear that she took after her father in that regard, as well as the sleek dark hair that was pinned back severely in an elaborately braided updo. She looked every bit the elegant, monied young debutante of the Csillan social scene, in heavy rich fabrics, and draping jewellery. Her skin was a rich, pale blue, and there was a smattering of freckles over her cheeks and nose.

She had the appearance of a young human woman of seventeen or eighteen, but Thessa knew precisely that she was eight years old and eleven months and twenty-two days. If she’d had a moment, she would’ve been able to work it out down to the minute.

“Demi,” she whispered, the name barely more than a breath across her lips.

Her daughter lifted her chin haughtily. “Minister Hyllus,” she said in a thickly accented voice, and Thessa’s heart shattered to hear her daughter’s voice for the first time; she pressed a hand to her mouth, already feeling her lip trembling. “This act of violence and deprivation of liberty of a Chiss citizen by an agent of your government, this is unacceptable. How dare you.”

Thake gestured to her with a flourish. “Ta-da,” he said flatly. “Surprise!”

She could feel tears in her eyes, and with great difficulty she reached up and brushed them away jerkily. “Thake,” she said, her word stilted as she struggled to force them out past the choking wad of emotions in her throat, “I’m going to kill you-”

“Well, that’s hardly polite, now, is it? And after I went to all this trouble for you-”

“ _Let her go!_ ” she roared, half coming out of her seat as her hands clenched into fists. “You fucking ktah, let her go!”

Thake held his hands up in surrender. “Sheesh, you try to do something nice for people,” he said, his trademark sneer now firmly in place. The bleeding corner of his lip wasn’t really cooperating, and it made him look pathetic. He bent over and disengaged the first of the wrist locks, and Demi immediately slapped him hard, his face jerking to the side with the impact. Thessa watched as he blinked several times, and then grinned at Demi in a way that made her skin crawl to watch. “Now, now, little one,” he said, “that’s hardly the polite way to greet your uncle-”

“Thake!” she snarled, gripping the desk until she felt one of her fingernails break.

“Fuck, shut up,” he quipped over his shoulder at her, reaching for the other restraint. “Now I remember why I didn’t bother calling for five years.”

Demi stood up immediately, lurching out of the chair and out of his reach, and as Thake straightened again she spun on her heel and very expertly kicked him in the knee. He grunted in pain, and Thessa heard the sharp crack from the impact; he crumpled, and only the fact that the chair was there to break his fall stopped him from landing face first on the floor.

Demi spat on him, and then stopped to look at her. Oh, by the ice, she had her father’s nose. Thessa had never even allowed herself to dream that she might get this opportunity again. “Demi,” she started to say, but her daughter held up a finger to interrupt her.

“Don’t speak to me,” she said, backing out of the holocomm’s range, “don’t ever contact me again!”

“Wait!”

There was no answer, and after a moment, the sound of her footsteps vanished into the distance. Thessa sank back into her chair, and stared blankly at the display before her; Thake, from where he lay sprawled awkwardly over the chair, started to chuckle. “That was so touching,” he said, making no effort to get up. “We should catch up more often.”

The tears were back in her eyes, but that slow and sloshing heat of rage was back inside of her. She looked down slowly, breathing hard as she made eye contact with him. “I hope for your sake, the commandos find you and imprison you,” she said, her voice shaking with anger, “because if I ever see you again, I’m going to kill you.”

He smiled nastily. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, darling,” he cooed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably worth the reminder- Evie's particular dialect is based on Singaporean English (or Singlish, if you will) and most of them I've picked up from my boss, with a little bit of research for more obscure phrases
> 
> Also! Weird thing to get annoyed about, but Dathomir in the EU is wildly different to Dathomir in Disney canon, so trying to work out how to depict it was frustrating. But for those unfamiliar with much EU content, the ziggurat on Dathomir is a real place, and contains powerful artefacts and portals (called Star Gates lol) that are remnants from the Kwa, a powerful space-faring empire that preceded the Rakata. Seemed pretty self-explanatory to me that that would be the kind of thing Vitiate would crave for himself/turn into his own private museum vault
> 
> And yay, chapter! Sorry it's so bleak! And sorry for the three month wait. We can thank The Dragon Prince for kicking my creative drive back into working order (and a certain sparkly elf who shares Arcann's VA), so lets hope season three comes sooner rather than later. I mean, I feel back on track now, but my brain gets derailed so easily


End file.
